


Black Phoenix

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Charming Universe [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord Harry, Dark Harry, Dark Lords, Gen, Hogwarts, Humor, M/M, Magical Creatures, Romance, crackish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-28 01:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 33
Words: 99,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Easy as Falling. Not only humans were watching on that day the world changed. Now Harry is balancing delegations from the magical creatures, romance, work, and trying to keep his phoenix from eating people. A Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord's work is never done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to Easy as Falling, and the second prequel to 'Charming When He Needs to Be.' I would suggest reading both of those first.

  
“The _Daily Prophet_ wants an interview.” Briseis swept her braid over her shoulder and consulted the list in her hand. Harry suspected it was a list of names. Or maybe tasks. Briseis was so organized she might have his life planned out months into the future. And if he broke her expectations and did something else, she would just make a new list. This one would probably go _years_.  
  
“No.”  
  
Briseis paused and looked at him over the top of her list. She had been a Slytherin, and Harry suspected she did intimidating better as his assistant than she ever had as a student. But Harry didn’t have to _feel_ intimidated. He rubbed his knuckles over Persephone’s breast feathers instead. Persephone, on the perch next to his chair, reached out with one red foot and repositioned his hand without ever lifting her head out of the feathers of her back.  
  
Harry waited for some feeling to return to his fingers before he attempted to say anything else. “The _Prophet_ wouldn’t tell the truth about me no matter what bribes I promised them. And since they’ll just print nonsense one way or the other, I might as well choose the option that gives me less work.”  
  
Briseis shuffled her papers for a moment, as though considering the validity of his argument, then said, “I wasn’t thinking that you should bribe them to tell the truth.”  
  
“I don’t think I can persuade them, either,” Harry said dryly.  
  
“Not _that_.” Briseis looked horrified enough that Harry snickered in spite of himself. “I was thinking of threatening them.”  
  
And then there were the times she still managed to surprise him. Harry bit one knuckle and considered her. “They wouldn’t print _that_? And make me look still worse?”  
  
Briseis reached down and picked something up off the little wheeled table she had started taking with her everywhere. “I don’t think anything can make you look worse than this,” she said, turning it around.  
  
The picture showed him standing in the middle of a burned ring of ground, accepting the oaths of some wizards who knelt at his feet. At his side was a black mass, not really distinguishable from grass in the photograph, and a leash of fire led from his wrist to Persephone, who was picking bits off the black mass. The headline screamed: _**DARK LORD HARRY POTTER LETS HIS BLACK PHOENIX EAT CORPSES!**_  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “That was _at least_ a week ago.”  
  
“You need something to replace this.” Briseis lowered the newspaper and leaned forwards intently. “Something that can create a new image of you in their minds, something else to gaze at and react to.”  
  
Harry turned around again to rub Persephone’s breast feathers. They were purest black on top, shading towards midnight blue as they narrowed, and he found them fascinating to touch. Persephone was faint and cold, not at all like Fawkes. “I don’t think anything can replace it,” he said over his shoulder. “I knew what I was doing when I let Persephone eat Yaxley. Yes, it’s disgusting. But it also convinces them as nothing else could.”  
  
“Convinces them.” Briseis turned that into ice and breathed it back at him.  
  
Too bad for her that Harry was already touching something colder. “Convinces them that I’m a Dark Lord. That I meant what I said about using Dark magic to defend myself. Yaxley’s death should have done that, but since it was technically a duel, there are some people who wouldn’t think I was frightening.”  
  
Briseis laid down her papers, moving with a care that Harry thought meant she was about to crack. Not with laughter, he hoped. “You _want_ to become frightening?”  
  
Harry nodded and finally lowered his hand when Persephone made the little grumbling noise in the back of her throat that meant she would try to take off a finger next second. “Yes. It’s the only thing that’s left to me, the only way I might have some peace. I can’t stop them from printing lies about me. I can’t stop them from fearing me, or always thinking I might attack. Even when I made an oath not to take over Hogsmeade and to honor those who wanted to come to my court, some of them refused to believe me.”  
  
Briseis picked up a quill and snapped it in two.  
  
Harry picked up the pace. “The _only_ way I can stop some of my enemies from attacking me, and forcing me to use more magic and kill more people, is to frighten them so badly that they won’t want to. Oh, there’ll still be some people who want to be heroes coming after me, but at least the Ministry should be warier. They haven’t sent anyone after me since Yaxley, you’ll notice.”  
  
Briseis’s frown deepened. “We have no proof that that was the Ministry.”  
  
“Ron checked for me,” Harry said. “He still has a contact or two who will look into the Ministry files for him. Yaxley escaped from the Battle of Hogwarts, but he was one of the first Death Eaters arrested after that. He’s been in Azkaban for years. They don’t have Dementors on the prison anymore, that’s true, but I’m sure the only way he could have escaped is with Ministry help and cooperation. And they must have thought it was a justified chance to take. If he destroyed me, that was a bonus. If he didn’t, his death wouldn’t cost them much.’”  
  
“But it did.” Briseis’s voice was so soft, Harry had trouble hearing her.  
  
“What do you mean? I still only destroyed Yaxley.” Harry looked out the window, wondering if Ministry people had come to the castle and she hadn’t told him.  
  
But no, of course not. He was bonded with the castle, and Hogwarts would have told him the instant there was an intrusion like that. Harry stroked his hand down the side of his desk, and was rewarded with a little purr and wriggle that made Persephone tuck her head more tightly into her feathers. Harry was just glad that, if his black phoenix did get jealous of Hogwarts, there was little she could do to harm it. Harry and the school were too closely conjoined.  
  
“I mean,” Briseis said, drawing his attention again, “that it cost the Ministry because they pushed you into a spectacular defiance. You gave them a _show_. You said that yourself when you told me about how you let Persephone eat his body.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Right. But that was a show for the people around me. The Ministry is so stubborn that they aren’t going to be convinced by it, just like they aren’t convinced by anything else I do.”  
  
“Your audience spreading the word.” Briseis gave him a small smile. “The conviction in their voices is affecting others.” She gestured to another stack of paper she’d carried in, and which Harry had asked her to set down without making him look at it. The letters.  
  
“People are writing me letters about—what? The duel? Persephone?” Harry stared at them.  
  
“Stop acting stupid,” Briseis said crisply. “They’re writing about what they saw. A Dark Lord who proclaimed himself in fire and light, created a phoenix out of _nothing_ , and then promised that he would never take over Hogsmeade and received some oaths.” The knowing look she shot him told Harry she probably suspected a disguised Draco had been one of those people, but until she said it aloud, he wouldn’t confirm her suspicions one way or another. “A show is more powerful for some people than anything else. Politics, debate, arguments, newspaper articles, photos.” She pointed her chin at the photograph in the _Prophet_ again. “Although you have that, too.”  
  
Harry blinked and smoothed his hand down his face. Sure, he’d thought about symbolic things, when he created Persephone and allowed her to eat, but he’d thought that would affect the people there, primarily, and maybe the Ministry. Only later had he realized that it was useless to think of affecting the Ministry, so his only audience was the few people there and those they managed to convince.  
  
“They told lots of people?” he muttered. “And those lots of people found it persuasive?”  
  
Briseis solemnly nodded. “And they _like_ the idea. They’re fascinated with it. A black phoenix. A Dark Lord who holds himself in limits. The wizard who could survive the curse Yaxley was carrying.” She smiled at Harry. “They found you fascinating when you survived the Killing Curse, after all. Why is this any different?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry admitted, after thinking about it for a bit. “I suppose I just didn’t expect those people to be _interested_ enough to propagate it everywhere. I’ve tried for so long to counter the Ministry, and nothing worked, that I decided this wouldn’t work, either.”  
  
“You’ve never done anything as radiant as before,” Briseis said, in a voice that made Harry look at her sharply.  
  
She gazed back at him steadily, but with her hands motionless on the stack of papers, and her lips slightly parted. Harry groaned and leaned back in his chair, ignoring the way Persephone shifted. As long as his hand wasn’t near her, she couldn’t tear it apart with either beak or claws. “You believe it, too, don’t you?”  
  
“Hard not to believe it with the evidence right there.” Briseis tilted her head at the perch. Persephone pulled her head up, regarded Briseis, and seemed to approve of her, since she went back to sleep.  
  
“But you haven’t been a fan before,” Harry muttered. “You found me unobjectionable enough to work for, and that’s all. I need you to still be as objective as you can, not someone who wants to kneel at my feet.”  
  
“Someone usually kneels before her Lord,” Briseis said quietly. “It doesn’t mean that she can’t still offer advice and expect her Lord to listen to her.” She hesitated, then added, “I did a moment ago, in fact. You’ve started something this time—something that didn’t start when you announced that you were becoming a Dark Lord, or when you tried to fight back against the Ministry. You’re right, they won’t learn. But they _will_ listen to their people, and you should try an interview.”  
  
“So this is the beginning,” Harry said, taking a deep breath, and thinking back to that moment in the collapsed dueling circle when he had thought that. He had _hoped_ it might be the beginning of a change, sure. But he had decided that was foolish. Nothing had changed when he punished Fifernum or Rosier.  
  
 _Because those weren’t public enough._  
  
True, Harry decided slowly. His punishment of Fifernum had been private, and Harry doubted she had told anyone about it. Rosier’s punishment had happened in front of the Wizengamot, but they had every reason not to spread it around. No use telling the population of wizarding Britain that a Dark Lord had made one of their members almost have an orgasm in front of the rest of the members.  
  
But this was different. His pessimism had been greater than his optimism, for once.  
  
Then Harry had to grin. _But just as wrong._  
  
He looked up at Briseis and shook his head. “It’s a good thing you’re still here. Otherwise, I might have kept going like there was no big defining moment, and that would be wrong, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“It would.” Briseis clapped an arm over her stomach and bowed. “And that means that you’re more prepared to accept the other news I bring you.”  
  
“What news?” But Harry took the letter she held out to him in answer. If she thought he should see something instead of having her tell him about it, then he should.  
  
The letter was smooth and plain, but the hand on it clumsy, and it had no seal. Harry opened it, wondering who would send him one like this. His friends’ handwriting would be recognizable, and most of the people in Hogsmeade who had sworn to him were living in the castle now. The Ministry would have gone with a seal and obviously expensive paper, meant to intimidate.  
  
 _Greetings to Dark Lord Harry Potter._  
  
 _The centaurs of the Forbidden Forest wish for the safety and protection of his court, in exchange for which they will tell him the will of the stars._  
  
Harry stared at it, then looked for the signature, blinking when he realized there wasn’t one. Well, why would there be? The letter itself had already told him who it was from.  
  
He looked up at Briseis. “You knew that the centaurs wanted to swear allegiance to me?”  
  
“It was a centaur who delivered it, this morning.” Briseis was smiling at him with a look that made her seem serene, but Harry could see the way her hands clenched in front of her, as if she was having to keep herself from fighting or bolting. “What else can it be but a vow? Or a bargain, perhaps. The centaurs haven’t been in touch with the Ministry since the end of the war. They can’t believe that one Dark Lord more or less in Hogwarts would make a difference to them, unless they decided he was someone it would be good to seek protection from.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. He hadn’t made a vow that he would protect the creatures of the Forbidden Forest, but then again, he hadn’t thought he would need to. The magical creatures had separated themselves further and further from humans since the end of the war. With peace won, they just wanted their homes back, which Harry could understand. He would have liked to sink into an obscure life of peace himself.  
  
Persephone made a harsh cackling sound from her perch. Harry stared at her suspiciously. He was never sure how much of his thoughts she could really sense.  
  
“My Lord?”  
  
Harry turned back to Briseis. “I’m going to accept the offer,” he said. “The Forbidden Forest is right next to Hogwarts, anyway, and it won’t take much to extend my wards over it. And the centaurs _should_ be left alone.”  
  
Briseis smiled. “Good. I suspect they might be bad enemies.” She chuckled as she took the letter back, and Harry thought she was laughing at their offer to let him know the will of the stars until she said, “And learning about this will push the conflict with the Ministry forwards further.”  
  
“You’re going to enjoy this war too much,” Harry muttered, and nudged Persephone in the breast. She lifted her head and looked at him.  
  
Harry still hesitated when he met her eyes. He knew how he had created her—pulling and pushing on both his own magical core and the spell that Yaxley had worn, the spell that had almost killed him—and then clapping the whole magical cycle together and outside him, the Darkness he couldn’t contain embodied in the shape of a phoenix. But he didn’t know yet what it _meant_ that she was made that way. He didn’t know how much control he had over her.  
  
Since the day, a week ago as Briseis had reminded him, that he’d created her, he had kept her with him. Persephone didn’t seem to mind, as long as he took her outside at least once a day so that she could hunt raw meat, or fed her bleeding tidbits from his plate, and petted her sometimes, and let her alone when she wanted to be.  
  
But Harry knew he would have to test his control over her sooner or later, and he thought this was the best way.  
  
“Go as an emissary to the centaurs,” he told her. “Tell them that I’ll meet them near the lake tomorrow, at noon.” A magical creature sent to magical creatures would give them a good impression of them, he hoped. And Persephone had no reason to want to hurt _them,_ not when they weren’t his enemies.  
  
Persephone opened her beak in what could have been a mocking little hiss or a yawn, and leaped into the air. Her wings hardly seemed to beat; instead, shadows flooded out of them and lifted her as if she was borne on them. Then she was gone out the window. Harry craned his neck and watched her swooping and circling towards the Forbidden Forest.  
  
“That’s a good idea,” Briseis said.  
  
Harry turned around. “What is?” If Briseis had somehow divined his thoughts and decided that Persephone was a good ambassador for the same reasons that he had, Harry was even more impressed with her than he had been.  
  
“Having the meeting by the lake,” Briseis said. “That way, you can meet with two delegations at once.”  
  
Harry stared at her. “Delegations?”  
  
Briseis picked up what Harry would have mistaken for a vial of a potion if he hadn’t known that nothing so simple was going to intrude into his complicated life. “Did I mention that the merfolk also sent a message?”  
  
Harry let his head drop forwards into his hands. So now _this_ was happening, and who knew how big his court would grow before he was done?  
  
 _I wonder what Draco is doing right now. And if he’d be able to get away sometime in the next day and listen to me complain._


	2. Starstruck

  
“Candidate Malfoy! Over here! Over here!”  
  
Draco turned around with a patient smile. He was leaving a debate on magical creature rights between him and another candidate, Abigail Mason, that he suspected she had orchestrated so she could depart the election gracefully. She knew she wouldn’t win, but she still wanted to make her (paranoid) points about the Ministry needing an expanded Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures because the magical creatures were supposedly mustering secret allies and getting ready to attack the wizarding world.  
  
Draco had won the debate mostly by letting her talk and nodding here and there, making soft noises and clucks of his tongue that had caused her to turn pale. She knew that he was undermining her, but accusing him would only make  _the public_ think she was paranoid.  
  
He knew a lot of people would want to talk to him, but he hadn’t expected the desperate shine in the young reporter’s eyes. Draco flickered his eyes down to the locket around her neck, which several of the reporters wore to identify their paper. The symbol was one he didn’t recognize, though, a heart pierced with an arrow.  
  
The young woman was still jumping up and down even after he stopped to look at her, her braided brown hair flying behind her and her gasps sounding just a little frenzied. “C-Candidate Malfoy,” she gasped. “Julia Browne, f-from the  _Heart of the Matter._ Can I have your opinion on the message the centaurs sent this morning?”  
  
Draco kept his sudden tremor from showing on his face. He did make sure that his advisor Rosenthal was standing at his side. She shook her head a little. Draco had to smile. If she hadn’t heard about it, then at least he didn’t have to feel that he was unacceptably neglecting something important about his job.  
  
“I’ve been in meetings and debate all this morning, Miss Browne,” he said, and smiled at the reporter. “I haven’t heard about this message. Do you have a copy of it?”  
  
Browne seemed to swell from her small stature to enormous size. She pulled a crinkled parchment out of her pocket and handed it over.  
  
Draco scanned it quickly. Then he went back and read the whole thing, because it was much shorter than he had expected.  
  
 _The centaurs of the Forbidden Forest seek the protection of Dark Lord Harry Potter. As of tomorrow, we expect our lands to be under his shielding magic._ Humans keep out.  
  
The last words were underlined.  
  
Draco handed the message back to Browne and kept down the bubble of laughter that was rising up in him, rather the way Browne had jumped up and down in front of him a second ago.   
  
Then he decided that this was a good political move for different reasons, and laughed aloud.  
  
Browne stared at him, her nostrils flaring. She must not have been a reporter for long, Draco thought tolerantly. Otherwise, she would have been quicker to grab her quill and parchment than she was now, poised to take down any words he uttered.  
  
“Good luck to them,” Draco said, gravely and calmly and wholly ignoring the way that Rosenthal was breathing down the back of his neck. She could do that all she wanted. No one except her and Harry knew that Draco had sworn an oath to Harry, just as no one except the Wizengamot knew that Rosenthal was under Harry’s protection against Rosier’s blackmail. “As you can see from the debate today, someone needs to intervene for the centaurs. There are those—” he didn’t glance in the direction of Mason, but he knew everyone else would understand who he meant “—who think that magical creatures deserve even more restrictions and laws conspiring against them than there are in the first place.”  
  
Rosenthal nudged his ribs with her elbow, probably for his use of the word “conspiring.” Draco serenely ignored her. She had done it under cover of their robes, so no one could see. He leaned forwards and fixed Browne with a smile. “I see magical creatures as groups we need to negotiate with. They have powers and politics of their own. We don’t refuse to receive ambassadors from other Ministries just because they have policies we don’t agree with in their own countries. How ridiculous not to receive magical creatures who live on our own soil.”  
  
Rosenthal had nearly tapped him with her elbow again, Draco knew by the feeling against his side, but she hesitated and slowly pulled her arm back. Draco didn’t turn his head to beam at her. He didn’t need to. His words had obviously got into her head and were bubbling there like a newborn potion.  
  
Browne was scribbling down what he had said, gasping again and glancing up at him with a flush on her cheeks that made Draco smile for a different reason. “Thank you,  _thank you_ ,” she whispered. She had a coup and she knew it, Draco thought. The other reporters had heard him, too, but they’d been further away and would have to ask for clarification. Browne would be able to say that he’d talked directly to  _her_. “That’s the best response ever!”  
  
Draco bit his lip. She was young, but she didn’t deserve to have her dignity torn to shreds. “You’re welcome.”  
  
Browne Apparated on the spot, and the other reporters pressed in, trying to get their share of his comments. Draco turned to answer, but Rosenthal gripped his shoulder and leaned near to whisper into his ear first.  
  
“You’re sure about this?”  
  
Draco glanced back at her for a fleeting second. “How likely do you think it is that Potter would keep his protection from them?”  
  
Rosenthal’s hand fell open, and she let him go. Draco nodded as he turned around to face the onslaught of camera flashes and questions. She saw sense well, when she let herself. Draco was acknowledging the inevitable, and wrongfooting other candidates, like Minister Tillipop, who would give a spluttering response and end up on the wrong side of Harry.   
  
 _Again._  
  
 _The future is with my Lord._  
  
Draco smiled more widely and genuinely than he had in months, at least in public, and the cameras twinkled. Draco imagined what the sight of his smile above the headline would do to Tillipop, and paused to add more brightness.  
  
*  
  
“Mars is propitious.”  
  
Harry smiled politely, and said nothing. He had decided before this meeting that he wouldn’t ask the meaning of anything the centaurs said. He wouldn’t understand it anyway, and they probably wouldn’t want to explain. That was the point of their offer, as he understood it. They would tell him what the stars said about the future in terms he could understand.  
  
But the bargain hadn’t started yet.  
  
Two centaurs stood waiting for Harry and Briseis at the edge of the lake. Neither one was Firenze, which Harry had been expecting. One was brown all over, from the shaggy hair that dropped down to his shoulders to his strong, gleaming flanks and the tail that swished behind him. The other had a bay coat, black tail, and streaks of white on his legs, but the sternest face Harry had seen since Professor McGonagall and a shock of brilliant blond hair. He was the one who’d spoken.  
  
Either of them might do anything at a moment’s notice, Harry had decided. He stroked Persephone, who was currently sitting on his shoulder and watching the centaurs as she might a delicious meal. She had delivered the message, he tried to tell her with his gentle hand on her back, and apparently in such a way that the centaurs understood it, by forming pictures in her flame. That should be enough to keep her from eating them.  
  
Persephone thoughtfully dug in her claws until she was on the verge of drawing blood. Harry dropped his hand away from her back, and her hold eased.  
  
“Welcome,” Harry said, since that was a word it wasn’t hard to understand. “You came to set up the bargain you referred to?”  
  
“Bargain,” said the blond centaur, and looked at the brown one as though he assumed he would have an answer.  
  
“Bargain,” echoed the brown one, and faced Harry. “I am Enzian. This is Hold.” He fell silent and watched Harry, his tail moving fast enough that the outer strands curled around his hooves.   
  
“Er,” Harry said, and coughed a little. “I’m Harry. This is Persephone. This is Briseis.” He indicated his adviser, standing back and watching the situation with a stack of paper in her hands. Harry didn’t think they would need it for the meeting with either the merfolk or the centaurs, but Briseis needed her own form of comfort.  
  
Enzian nodded, and once again stood still.  
  
Harry decided it was up to him to take the plunge. “You want my protection in exchange for telling me the will of the stars,” he said.  
  
“Venus is especially bright this month,” Hold said.  
  
Persephone leaned forwards and snapped her beak, hard enough to sound like the popping of someone’s jaw.  
  
The centaurs looked at her, neither one seeming afraid. Hold even nodded to her, as though the clack of her beak had been a learned commentary on his invocation of Venus. Harry reached up and gripped one of her feet. He didn’t think he could do much if Persephone did break free, but it ought to delay her for a few moments, and give the centaurs a chance to get under the branches of the Forest, where she couldn’t fly as well.  
  
 _If they were smart enough to run._ Given the way they still stood there staring at him, Harry couldn’t be sure.  
  
“You said that you would reveal to me the will of the stars if I gave you my protection,” Harry said at last, going for the only answer that might prompt them to respond. “What is the will of Venus?”  
  
Enzian nudged his way forwards a little, as if he wanted to be standing right in front of Harry when he gave him important information. His eyes were wide and earnest. “Venus is a planet, and not a star,” he said gently.  
  
Harry didn’t clap his hand to his face because the centaurs might comment on seeing starlight leaking through his fingers. Besides, doing that would mean letting go of Persephone, who was vibrating a little with the force of her suppressed shrieks. Harry wondered how her mission to the centaurs had gone so well. Perhaps because she’d spoken, all alone, and the centaurs hadn’t confined her or interrupted.  
  
“The will of the stars,” said Hold, slowly, and with a depth to his voice that made Harry look up hopefully. Maybe they would get to statements that he could understand at last. “The rising stars show a new influence rising over Britain. It must be you.” He peered intently at Harry, and his tail was swishing hard enough now to curl around his back hooves. “There is no other candidate that fits.”  
  
“Because no other candidate is rising right now?” Harry asked. He had thought of the Ministry election right away, but the centaurs didn’t always care about human politics, and maybe the stars wouldn’t reflect them.  
  
On the other hand, they had sometimes said things about the war with Voldemort. And it was a little arrogant to think that  _he_ was important enough to have a set of star-reflections all his own, but the election wasn’t.  
  
“Because of your connection with Mars.” Hold moved forwards a step and bent down to look into Harry’s face. For some reason, that made Persephone stop shrieking to herself. Harry cautiously let her go. She didn’t take off to tear out Hold’s eyes, but turned to preening her feathers instead. Harry swallowed. At least  _one_ thing was going right.  
  
The centaur’s glinting, deep brown eyes had a sheen that Harry thought could be mesmerizing if he looked into it for long enough. He contented himself with touching Persephone’s tail once and glancing away.  
  
“Because of your connection with war,” Hold whispered. “You can bring war back, and you can calm it. You can tame it, and you can make it wild. It all depends on what you do, and whether you pay heed to the stars or only the beings that surround you on earth.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “So you  _are_ saying that you’ll be advisers of a sort, in return for my promise to protect the Forest?”  
  
“Mars is not a star,” said Enzian, in the same exact chiding tone which he had used to pronounce that Venus wasn’t one.  
  
Harry turned around. Maybe he should act like Persephone and use actions instead of words to communicate. He reached down and into his soul, stirring the magic around until he knew what he wanted to do. Bonding with the Forest the way he had bonded with Hogwarts wasn’t on the agenda. Protecting it was, and showing the centaurs he could do a good job of that would help with the rest of the negotiations, he thought.  
  
He stabbed one hand forwards, and the magic rose from his fingers and poured in a glittering, rainbow-like cascade over the Forest. At the same moment, Persephone opened her mouth and began to sing.  
  
The song startled Harry so much that he nearly stopped his pouring of magic. But then he shook his head and kept moving his hand back and forth. The magic settled on the leaves and trunks of the Forest, blazing.  
  
And then it turned green.  
  
The centaurs turned to watch as the trees shimmered emerald and black, the magic slithering down to their roots and up to their branches. Harry clamped his hands shut and ended the flow of power a moment later. He had done what he could, and now it remained to be seen if the magic would do what he wanted.  
  
The color of the light seemed to say that, so far, it was. The trees flushed up and down, all over, with the dazzling shine of it. Harry closed his eyes and could feel the power traveling through the soil, loosening it and then tightening it around the roots of the trees, able to let them resist efforts to dig them up or burn them now.  
  
And then the branches trembled, and a new cascade of light rose over the Forest, this time coming from the trees themselves. It was there for a moment only, a leaping fountain, and then it vanished. Harry breathed out. He had hoped that would happen, too, but he hadn’t been sure until he actually saw it.  
  
“What was  _that_?” For once, Enzian seemed startled enough to respond like a normal—person, Harry supposed. He could get used to thinking of the centaurs as people, and not just magical creatures.  
  
Harry reached up and stroked Persephone’s feathers again. He shouldn’t have doubted her, he thought. She was magnificent, and having her here seemed to strengthen his magic. “It’s the power that will protect you,” he said. “Distributing itself to every leaf and creature in the Forest, as fast as it could.”  
  
“How will it protect us?” Hold leaned down to look into Harry’s face again. Although Harry had never heard of any centaur having the ability to detect lies, he was sure that was what was happening now, and that Hold would sense it in seconds if he tried to deceive them.  
  
Just as well, then, that Harry had no such intention. He met Hold’s eyes mildly and shook his head a little. “It’ll defend you because it makes it clear that the Forest is mine to other wizards who come into it,” he said. “Wizards who aren’t a part of my court, at least. They’ll hear voices whispering my name everywhere they go. They’ll see shadows that vanish when they turn around, but all those shadows will wear my eyes. The longer they stay in there, the closer the shadows will come, and the more power they’ll have. They’ll destroy them if they linger. That, I promise.”  
  
Enzian fell back a step as Hold loomed closer still. “Then you have  _branded_ the Forest. With your name, your mark.”  
  
Harry blinked a moment, wondering why that particular term caused the centaur such anger, and then glanced at his horse-like flanks. Yes, well, he could see why the idea of branding would be sensitive. “No,” he said. “I’ve defended it. It’s more like setting a troop of loyal—phoenixes inside the Forest and letting them attack intruders who aren’t supposed to be there.” He had almost said “dogs,” but he didn’t think centaurs would appreciate references to dogs, either. From what Harry had read, wizards had sometimes used hounds to hunt them.  
  
Persephone bit his ear, hard. Harry hissed as blood dribbled down on his shoulder, but he didn’t do anything to her. He still didn’t really understand the limits of his relationship with her, and he had endured worse pain to make her.  
  
The centaurs exchanged glances again, and then Enzian said to him, “What if they come in and only stay a short time, but still hurt us? What good will your shadow-phoenixes and watching eyes do then?”  
  
Harry smiled pleasantly at him. “The shadows are the passive warning system. The magic that ran down the trees’ roots is the active one. It’ll attack the minute it feels the pain of a creature in the Forest that comes from a wizard’s wand.”  
  
“Even wizards of your court?”  
  
Harry shook his head, inwardly marveling how easy it was to talk to centaurs once they thought he was threatening them. “No. The ones of my court will have a special  _brand_ of their own to render their wands free of it. But if they attack somebody for anything other than self-defense, then the watching eyes will see it, and those defenses will come into play, too. I don’t intend to let anyone get away with betraying me.”  
  
The centaurs scraped their left forehooves in the ground, simultaneously. Harry stood there and let them think about that, both the fact that he had done something for them to guard the Forest even though they hadn’t kept up their side of the bargain yet—  
  
And what would happen to them if they tried to betray him.  
  
Abruptly, Enzian slid to one knee, a quick bow that ended almost immediately with him on his feet again. “That is enough for me,” he said. “You are a child of Mars indeed, and I will advise you.”  
  
Hold looked at both of them with a frown, and said, “I will take the message to the others.” And he turned and sped back into the Forest.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. Well, that had gone all right, then. He scrubbed absently at his ear, and the blood still dripping from it.  
  
“My lord.” Briseis handed him the vial of clear lake-water, which contained the merfolk’s singing message.  
  
Harry sighed.  _Yes, really, a Dark Lord’s work is never done._  He turned to face the lake. He hoped that he was done with demonstrating powerful magic for the day; it exhausted him.  
  
Persephone fluffed her tail out and trilled.  
  
Harry glared sideways at her out of the corner of his eye.  _Yes, you bloody phoenix, I know._ You  _love it. Vain, greedy creature._  
  
Persephone looked at him smugly, and lifted her tail to perform an even less pleasant operation down his back.  
  



	3. Stolen Moments

Draco glanced over his shoulder, and then decided that wasn’t enough and cast a spell that would tell him whether Rosenthal was still in the house. He sighed when the answer came back to him, like an echo from empty rooms. No, she had gone home.  
  
And  _he_ was going to Harry. He had been away from him long enough. Hell, he’d hardly got to see him in the week since Harry had raised the black phoenix and broken free from that dueling circle that was meant to kill him.  
  
Draco smiled slightly as he cast in the Floo powder and called out, “Harry Potter’s office!” He had something to tell Harry that might cheer him up, or at least make him rub his hands together. The Ministry had refused to comment officially on the way Harry had become a Dark Lord—they had left that to the  _Daily Prophet_ and other members of the public who wanted to be hysterical—but Draco had allies who worked inside, and who would pass on word of what was happening there.  
  
Harry still wasn’t a Dark Lord in the sense that his father would mean the words if he spoke them, but Draco thought he would enjoy the news anyway.  
  
“Draco?” Harry called, an instant after Draco stepped into the office. “I thought that was you. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I’m just making dinner.”  
  
Draco had glanced around the office, noting the addition of a few chairs and a bigger, flatter hearth in front of the fireplace, but he turned around gaping when he heard  _that_. He couldn’t help himself. “ _What_?” he asked.   
  
“I said, I was making dinner.” Harry glanced up from what looked like a brazier in the corner of the room. “Why?”  
  
“You’ve got  _house-elves_ to do that for you,” Draco muttered, dropping into the chair that was usually marked as his, one with a curved back and upholstered arms that made comfortable rests. Sometimes he thought that it wasn’t their past stances on blood politics or their upbringing that really separated him and Harry, but little things like this. Harry had the power and the resources to command a bunch of people to do things for him. That he would prefer to do a mundane chore like cooking dinner for himself…  
  
Well, Draco could think of reasons, but he sincerely doubted they were Harry’s. “Are you afraid of poison?” he asked.  
  
Harry gaped at him for a second, then snorted hard enough to make little bits of snot fly out of his nose. Draco winced primly. “What? Of course not. I think Hogwarts would tell me if anyone even brought dangerous ingredients into the school, let alone poison. It let me know when some of the students were trying to sneak plants out of the Herbology greenhouses.”  
  
Draco sighed. “Then why make dinner for yourself?” he asked, deciding he might as  _well_ ask. He didn’t understand, but Harry wouldn’t mind trying to help him comprehend it. “The house-elves would make it faster and better, and Hogwarts would protect you. You can eat in both comfort and safety.”  
  
Harry turned around. He had a pan in his hand—Draco didn’t know the word for the kind it was, and he was proud of that and had no intention of changing it—and was swirling the contents back and forth by a long handle. “But I want to do it this way,” he said. “I like it.”  
  
Draco cocked his head. “All right. That doesn’t answer my original question, though. Why make it for yourself, besides the fact that you like it?”  
  
Harry’s jaw set. “That I like it is enough reason.”  
  
Draco studied him closely. He wondered if someone had been annoying him, from the way Harry gave a little stamp of his foot a second later, and the magic blew around his head into wavering, transparent wings before it calmed down and Harry turned back to the fire. That might explain why he was doing a mundane chore, to calm down.  
  
“Just tell me.” Draco made his voice as soft as he could, and reached out a hand. He was too far away from Harry to touch him, even with the cooperation of Hogwarts, but Harry saw the gesture from the corner of his eye, and sighed and relaxed the way Draco had hoped he would.  
  
“I got this letter today,” Harry said, and a crumpled envelope floated towards Draco. Draco glanced once at Harry, and Harry shook his head. “Oh, no. It didn’t have curses or anything on it. It’s the content.” He shut his eyes and drew in a long breath.  
  
Draco picked it up. The handwriting looked vaguely familiar, but not until he read it did he understand.  
  
 _Dear Dark Lord Harry Potter,_  
  
 _As requested by you, I am reporting the existence of an abused wizarding child. She is Muggleborn, ten years old. Registered in the Ministry’s archives, but she has not yet been visited by anyone to tell her the wizarding world is real. She lives in Essex…_  
  
There was a Muggle address that meant nothing to Draco. Muggles had the strangest ways of naming things, as far as he was concerned. And imagine having to rely on  _humans_ who had to decipher their handwriting for delivery of letters, instead of owls. He skipped down to the next part that made sense.  
  
 _My observation indicates that her abuse is verbal and emotional, with perhaps an occasional foray into physicality. Her name is Anne Enders. A photograph is included._  
  
 _As requested by you,_  
 _Fifernum._  
  
Draco sighed out. That was Blaise’s mother, working in the Ministry under an assumed identity, who had collected and sent out photographs of Harry’s abuse. Part of her punishment had been to let Harry know instantly if she found out that another wizarding child was being abused. Draco laid the letter aside and studied Harry’s tense back. He no longer wondered at the mood he was in, only that it wasn’t worse.  
  
“Did you already do something?” he asked quietly.  
  
Harry tilted his head in a slashing motion. “Briseis kept me from going right away. She was afraid that I would be angry enough to kill her parents. And I might have been. We sent Hagrid on a thestral instead. He has Anne in a safe place tonight, and he’ll bring her to Hogwarts tomorrow. If anyone can make her feel at home, he’s the one.”  
  
Draco arched his eyebrows, but decided it was unlikely a Muggleborn would have the same kind of fear of giants that a pure-blood child would have. “And her parents?”  
  
“ _I will deal with them_.”  
  
The voice made several of the stones near Draco suddenly crack and craze as if with frost. Draco hissed between his teeth and rubbed at the gooseflesh that had appeared on his arms in the wake of that intense wave of magic.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry muttered, turning to stare at him. “Shit. Sorry,” he repeated, and went back to shaking his pan.  
  
“It’s all right,” Draco said, pitching his voice to soothe. He knew that Harry’s anger was already gone; otherwise, the room would have been cold, still. “I know you didn’t mean to upset me, and it’s understandable that you would be angry at the thought of another child being hurt the way you were hurt.”  
  
“I don’t know if her parents abused her because she has magic,” Harry whispered, staring into the fire. “I don’t know if it was anything like what I went through, or if it was worse. I sent Hagrid because I kept dreaming about someone coming to rescue me, my parents or someone who would tell me that I was a secret prince or  _anyone._ And Hagrid is fierce, but he would put Anne first. He would want to take care of her instead of frightening her parents.”  
  
“You would have, too.”  
  
Harry turned around, and Draco caught a glimpse of the savagery on his face that made his own tongue dry up. At almost the same moment, Persephone dropped from the ceiling onto his shoulder and sang a light trilling note, rubbing her beak against Harry’s face.  
  
“That’s the friendliest I’ve ever seen your phoenix,” Draco said, deciding that they needed to talk about something else to dissipate some of the tension in the air.  
  
Harry laughed dryly and lifted one hand to touch the middle of Persephone’s back. She ducked her head, though, and after a hesitation that Draco could feel in his bones, Harry reached up to stroke one finger against her neck instead. “She’s acting this way at the moment because I’m thinking about destroying something,” he muttered. “Or some _one_. She wants to encourage me.”  
  
Persephone picked up her head and gave another little trill. She was close to Harry’s face, but all she did was, very gently, take one of his eyelashes between the ends of her beak and start nibbling. Harry caught his breath, but did nothing else, and a second later, she released his eyelash and crooned at him, looking towards the window.  
  
“She really wants you to go and hurt them, doesn’t she?” Draco asked quietly. “She’s not trying to comfort you because you’re hurting?”  
  
“Anne’s the one who’s hurting,” Harry said automatically. Persephone jerked her head up and gave a little hiss like a snake, and Harry rolled his eyes and turned back to whatever he was cooking. “No, she can sense that I’m on the brink of losing control, and she’s trying to make me lose it.”  
  
Draco stared at the bird again. She was lovely, the firelight catching her feathers that at first seemed plain black and starting all sorts of other colors to life: blue, green, violet, coruscating indigo. “I didn’t realize having her was so hard on you,” he murmured.  
  
Harry started to shrug, and then seemed to remember he had a temperamental black phoenix on his shoulder and didn’t. “I would rather have her than not have her, considering what could have happened when she came into being,” he said. “But she’s the dark and the Dark part of me externalized, Draco. What she wants isn’t the best guide for my conscience.”  
  
Draco sat back and studied Harry. Harry gave a final shake to whatever was in the pan and opened the lid, laying it down. “You want some?” he added over his shoulder, picking up a plate that lay off to the side and starting to pile food on it.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. He didn’t know what it was, and it might be more of the thick Muggle sludge Harry had already tried to feed him a couple of times before, and which Draco had mouthed his way through. But he didn’t need to eat it, just to pretend.  
  
And right now, he had the feeling Harry needed someone to accept him.  _All_ of him, or as much as they were willing to take.  
  
Harry smiled at him over his shoulder and began taking out the thick pieces of toast inside the pan with a long fork, examining them critically for a second before he placed them on a plate and sent the plate skimming over to Draco via a controlled air current. Draco studied the toast cautiously before he took a bite. It looked thick, and as though it had the gleam of melted butter on it, but no worse than that.  
  
Then he took a bite, and almost choked.  _Sweet._ There was butter soaked into the toast, but also sugar, and something deeper and sweeter that might have been a spice of some kind. Draco groped with his hand for a cup of water, and Harry laughed and handed him one as he came over to settle into the chair opposite Draco.  
  
“Sorry,” he said. “That was Dudley’s favorite, and I like to make it because I never got to have it when I was a kid. I always forget how it’ll strike someone who didn’t grow up with it, though.”  
  
Draco glanced at him sideways, wondering if he had meant to reveal that bit of information about never getting to have something his cousin ate constantly, but Harry was too busy trying to coax Persephone to accept a tidbit of toast to notice his look. Persephone considered it with her head on one side. Then she lifted it and flew regally away from Harry’s shoulder, landing on the perch that sat beside his desk. When she began to vigorously clean her breast feathers, Draco snickered.  
  
Persephone fixed him with a freezing look, but Draco wasn’t concerned. She wasn’t  _his_ phoenix. Besides, she must know that he would encourage some of Harry’s tendencies that she probably wanted urged along.  
  
And, too, Harry would never forgive her if she attacked Draco.  
  
Feeling a bit calmer than he had when he first came into the office, Draco turned back to Harry. “It seems so long since I’ve seen you,” he murmured.  
  
Harry looked up at him and smiled. “Well, it isn’t so long since you swore me that vow.” He took a few hard bites of toast, crunching them between his teeth as if they had personally offended him, and then laid the plate aside. “I meant to ask you,” he said softly, leaning forwards, while the fire highlighted his face and made Draco want to touch him. “Why  _did_ you swear it?”  
  
“Because I had the chance, and the chance might never come again,” Draco answered easily. Of all the questions that Harry could have asked him, that one startled him a little. “There I was, and I was disguised, and no one except Rosenthal knew. It was a gesture that wouldn’t hurt my campaign the way swearing under my own name and face would.”  
  
“Yeah, but,” Harry said, and fell silent. Across the room, Persephone looked at him, but a second later turned her back. Draco couldn’t read much from that gesture.  
  
Draco reached out to take Harry’s hand. “What?” he added, when Harry looked at him with a painful, yearning uncertainty that made Draco’s heart throb a little. “Tell me.”  
  
Harry’s hand closed around his hard enough to make Draco’s wrist ache. “I want you to be free,” Harry whispered. “I want the people around me to be able to do what they want. I mean, within reason. I would still turn against someone who said they served me but wanted to shut the school down. But what does it mean that  _you_ decided that you would rather swear to me than not? Why would you want anyone else to control your life? I thought part of the reason you wanted to become Minister was to have the control that Voldemort stole from you during the war.”  
  
Draco blinked. He had never considered that particular interpretation of his decision, but he supposed it made sense. He wondered if that was one reason his parents hadn’t objected to his decision as much as they could have. Lucius could have cut off the money that Draco received from him, or disinherited him. He never had, despite all his complaining.  
  
“I swore to you because I wanted to,” Draco said. “I wanted to be under your protection. I want to fight with you. I want to serve you. I understand all the reasons that we have to keep our connection secret for now, and I agree with them,” he added hastily, while Harry raised his eyebrows. “I know, I know. It wouldn’t look good for either of us.”  
  
“It wouldn’t look good for  _you_ ,” Harry corrected. “They would think you were my pawn. But it could only look good for me to have a skilled and competent lover.” He raised Draco’s hand to his lips and kissed it.  
  
Draco let his eyelashes flutter for a second, enjoying the surge of magic and power through the kiss, but just for that second. Then he shook his head and firmly put it aside. “You think I’m your pawn because I swore to you?”  
  
“It wasn’t as binding a vow as it could have been,” Harry said. “But, yes.”  
  
“I  _want_ to be with you,” Draco said, and stood to cross the distance between them, leaning against Harry and half-crushing him back into the chair. “I want to stand at your side. I can’t do it openly, and maybe I wouldn’t know what to do if I could. I  _am_ still a Slytherin, after all.” He made Harry smile, and that was success enough to embolden him to continue. “But that just makes me more determined to have the kind of connection that we  _can_ have.” He ran his hand down Harry’s shoulder and tugged a little at his hair. Harry closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the cloth of the chair.  
  
“I want you,” Draco said. “For my lover, for my friend, for my ally.” He swallowed and spoke the last words, the ones he hadn’t said aloud before, because Harry would almost certainly take them the wrong way. “For my Lord.”  
  
Harry’s eyes opened, and he looked at Draco for a long, still moment. Then he reached up.  
  
Draco reached back and down, dizzy with relief and pleasure. Harry was past the moment when he might have rejected that. Maybe he had been ever since he created Persephone. He knew that he was a Lord now, and he accepted it much more easily than he ever had.  
  
Their lips met, and another desire than just being with Harry and being his sprang to life inside Draco. They had kissed before, they’d touched, but someone or something had always interfered when they might have gone further.  
  
“Lock the door,” Draco breathed into Harry’s mouth, drawing back enough to say that. “Cast any warding spells that you have to. Just make sure that we’re not interrupted, again.”  
  
Harry’s eyes flared, and he whispered into Draco’s neck, “ _Yes_ ,” the instant before the shadows around the room deepened, stones grew over the door, and Persephone took flight with a startled squawk. She soared out the window and disappeared.  
  
Draco had an instant to laugh before Harry kissed him again.  
  
And lots of things—like awareness of the outside world—disappeared. 


	4. Reclaiming

Drowning.  
  
Draco was drowning.  
  
Harry’s skin beneath his hands was warmer than skin should be, gleaming from behind as though it was a transparent film over pearly fire. The magic made Draco’s palms tingle constantly as if they were waking up from being trapped under something. The way Harry’s hair brushed over Draco’s fingers left sparks behind.  
  
Draco bent his head and fastened his mouth at the juncture of Harry’s neck and shoulder. Harry hissed under his breath, and for a second his hand flexed in the air as though he didn’t know what to do with it.  
  
Then he gripped the back of Draco’s neck and wrenched his head up. Draco let him do that, licking his lips. Harry stared, leaning forwards, and a senseless babble of sound came out of his glistening mouth.  
  
Draco ducked his head and let his eyelashes flutter. “I don’t speak Parseltongue, remember?” he whispered, and his voice came out even huskier than he had planned on.  
  
Harry tilted him backwards. For a second Draco thought he would fall on the stone floor and tried to brace himself, and then he felt something soft but substantial beneath his back. He relaxed. Of course Harry wouldn’t let him fall, and the magic that bonded Harry to Hogwarts and made him lord of this place could create a bed if it wanted to.  
  
The blankets under Draco were soft and furry. When he looked down, he saw they were also black, with streaks of white and silver in the fur here and there. He doubted they were really the skins of animals, more something Harry had conjured for the occasion.  
  
Once Draco saw their color, though, he couldn’t help himself. He was a showman; it was the one part of his campaign that Rosenthal seemed to think he needed no help with. Draco spread his legs out, slowly, kicking so that his robes fluttered back a little. Then he tilted his head until he had almost buried his hair in the blankets, and offered his hands and his throat up to Harry. He knew very well what he would look like, all that pale against all that black.  
  
“Don’t you want me?” he whispered, when Harry hovered and stared but didn’t descend to put his hands and mouth in the places that Draco most wanted them.  
  
And Harry descended on him.  
  
*  
  
Harry couldn’t believe how  _hungry_ he was. Yes, he had wanted Draco for a long time now, and it seemed that someone always came along and interrupted him before he could do all the things to Draco that he longed to do. But still, that didn’t account for the force that made his blood pound against his ears and his fingers twitch again and again. He felt like a Dreamless Sleep Potions addict that he’d arrested when he was still an Auror. The addict had banged against the bars of his prison and screamed that he needed more of his potion.  
  
And Harry needed more of Draco.  
  
He took his shirt off first, because that was in the way of all the skin on his chest that Harry wanted to touch. He saw faint silvery scars there, and one that looked as though Draco hadn’t had it Healed in time. Harry traced his fingers over them, back and forth, and Draco hissed. Harry grinned.  _You do so speak Parseltongue._  
  
He might even have teased him about it, except his mouth could be put to better uses. He leaned over and began to suck on Draco’s collarbone, making Draco arch and give another kind of hiss, in the most delicious way. His hand flailed out as if he would stop Harry, and Harry caught it and guided it to the side. Then he went right back to sucking as hard as he could, and Draco’s body danced and writhed in response, and Harry found that he really liked that.  
  
He was Hogwarts’s lord and could do things to make it respond, but being Draco’s Lord was…better.  
  
“God, I love you,” he mumbled against Draco’s skin, against his nipple that made Draco writhe again, against his collarbone that stood out soft and silky beneath his skin, against his leg that he wandered down towards. But to get to his leg, he had to tug off Draco’s shoes, and then his trousers, and then his pants, and that  _still_ left Draco’s robes spread around them like another blanket. Harry frowned. He had never noticed how many clothes wizards wore before, almost as if they wanted to make sex difficult.  
  
But when he waved his hand, the clothes tore themselves off with a quickness that startled Draco but didn’t hurt him, and folded themselves in the corner. Harry grinned at Draco’s expression and bent his head so that he could suck, this time, on the skin behind Draco’s knee.   
  
Draco  _liked_ that. He was so hard that Harry wasn’t surprised when Draco turned to the side and began to rub himself against the blankets, but he had to stop that, because making Draco come was only for  _him_. He reached out a hand and captured Draco instead.  
  
And once he felt that, he forgot all about going slow.  
  
 _Shit,_ Harry thought incoherently as he watched the writhing expressions on Draco’s face. His jaw had fallen open and he gaped. Then he gasped as Harry stroked him, slow and steady. Harry sped his hand up, and Draco’s eyes shut and he began arching his hips mindlessly, without pattern, just trying to get off.  
  
This was all the power that Harry wanted, for now. The rest of the world could go hang.  
  
He banished his own clothes the same way he had Draco’s, and checked the locking charms on the door one more time. No way was he letting this be interrupted. He might incinerate the unfortunate person who tried.  
  
Then he climbed into the bed with Draco, and bent down to kiss that gaping mouth. Draco turned his head back towards him, and they collapsed into their kiss.   
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t know how he was going to  _recover_ after this. Recovery was something that happened to other people.   
  
People who didn’t have Harry Potter getting ready to fuck them.  
  
Draco had wondered if Harry would know what to do. None of the newspaper articles had so much as breathed a hint that he’d ever had a male lover before this, which was a good thing, as Draco would have had to hunt down that lover and obsessively compare himself with him if they had. But he could have learned it since he started thinking about taking Draco to bed, or Draco might have to teach him.  
  
Draco wasn’t sure what idea made him hotter, actually.  
  
It turned out that Harry reached to the side and dipped his fingers in a pot of something glistening on a table close to the bed—a table that hadn’t been there a moment ago, any more than the bed had been—and when he slid them down and towards Draco’s arse, they were convincingly sticky. Draco sucked in a breath and spread his legs further. He kept running into barriers, the humped blankets and the sides of Harry’s knees.  
  
It didn’t matter. With the way Harry’s eyes burned him, Draco didn’t know if he  _could_ display himself enough to answer the hunger in that gaze. Or the hunger that seared through him, and made him arch his hips and wriggle to get closer to Harry, his erection thrusting at him until Harry reached down and circled it with another slick hand.  
  
Draco took in a breath that burned his lungs going down, and thrust. He  _glided_ through Harry’s fingers, and he couldn’t tell with what, the oil Harry had fetched or his own body’s gleaming liquid.  
  
That shouldn’t have made him yearn, either, but it did.  
  
Harry smiled at him, heavy-lidded with desire, and slid his finger into Draco’s arse. Draco relaxed. It was hard to do that, most of the time, but most of the time, he didn’t have Harry looming over him and the promise of something wonderful as soon as he  _did_ manage to relax.  
  
Harry took a little whistling breath, and pushed his finger deeper. Draco licked his lips, and arched his body until it felt as if he would fly off the bed. Harry reached out and placed his hand in the center of Draco’s chest, stroking, holding him down. He shook his head when Draco pushed up again and whispered, “If you go now…I can’t…”  
  
 _I’ve reduced the all-powerful Dark Lord of Hogwarts to stammering._  
  
Draco was fucking  _ready_ then, and the way that Harry kept probing and pushing at him with that one finger didn’t help, just made it worse. He pushed himself back into the bed, and Harry smiled a little. Then Draco pulled himself away, and Harry looked as if he was close to panic.  
  
“No more,” Draco said. It was a challenge to convince his throat and tongue to work, but then, they didn’t have Harry’s mouth right there to kiss, so they would just have to do something else to get what they wanted. “No—more. Stop  _teasing_ me. Come and fuck me.”  
  
Harry gaped at him as though he had never seen Draco before. Well, he hadn’t seen  _this_ one, Draco thought, the one begging Harry to fuck him. Draco hadn’t met him before, either, but he rather liked the bloke.  
  
He planted his heels on the bed and wriggled his hips at Harry. Harry’s eyes promptly lit, and he almost growled. His slick hands slid up to Draco’s hips, and he seemed to have got rid of that stupid hesitancy. He aimed and pointed and pushed, and Draco arched again, although this time he knew he couldn’t get away and he had no intention of doing so.  
  
Harry burned inside him, a lot like his breathing did. Draco reached up one groping hand and gripped Harry’s arm, holding him in place.  
  
“Too much?” Harry whispered. Or panted, really. Draco snapped his eyes open to see Harry leaning over him, breathing like a dog.  
  
“A lot,” Draco said. It was all he could say, because then his throat seemed to squeeze shut on the rest of the words. He closed his eyes and squeezed Harry’s arm in turn, murmuring what weren’t words but just sounds.  
  
Harry seemed to interpret them correctly, at least, and pushed ahead. Draco felt him pierce further and further inside, and he shuddered, hips banging down on the bed again. His legs followed, at least until Harry seized them and hauled them up on his shoulders. He was bending Draco almost in half.  
  
Draco loved it.  
  
“Now,” Harry said, and either his magic had told him that Draco wanted him to move or he just couldn’t wait any longer himself. Once again, Draco wasn’t sure which would be hotter.  
  
Harry began to rock, so hard that the bed shuddered and sang around them. Then Harry paused for a second, and the bed steadied itself. Draco chuckled, or thought he did. He wasn’t sure that the noise made it all the way out of his throat.  
  
Harry bent down, panting. Draco opened his eyes and found Harry leaning on him, chest to chest, approximately. His forehead wouldn’t touch Draco’s, but it came bloody close. And the tension and the strain flooded Draco as much as the pleasure, and he opened his mouth and extended his tongue.  
  
It couldn’t touch Harry’s, but not for lack of trying. Harry smiled at him, and it seemed that any question he could have asked, wanted to ask, would try to ask, dissolved into nothingness. Draco leaned his head back on the pillow and nodded gracious permission that came out like desperate permission.  
  
Harry did chuckle— _he_ could get full breath to do it, the bastard—and began to thrust. The sheer pleasure of having his Lord inside him filled Draco for a second, and it was good.  
  
Then Harry began to hit his prostate, and it was almost unbelievable.  
  
*  
  
Harry watched Draco’s eyes shutting despite themselves, his head lolling back. Draco was having a  _good_ time, Harry thought. He didn’t need to worry about that. And he didn’t need to worry that he didn’t enjoy it himself, either. The pleasure was striking, up from his spine and down his shoulders and around his groin.  
  
He didn’t need to worry about anything, in fact, except  _continuing_ to make sure that Draco had a good time.  
  
Harry half-shut his eyes and threw his back into it. Draco groaned beneath him. The bed did, too. Harry sent a little more magic into the stones, requesting that Hogwarts not let them fall in the middle of having sex. The bed stopped groaning.  
  
Draco started panting as though he was having a heart attack. Harry snapped his eyes open and leaned down to see what was happening.  
  
Draco stared at him, glazed and cross-eyed, and whispered, “Were you—were you using magic? It felt good. Do it  _again_.” It sounded like it had taken a miracle to for him to get even that much of the words out coherent and whole.  
  
But his wish was Harry’s command, and Harry did do it again, running his magic into the blankets on the bed and making them softer. Draco called out sharp and clear at the end of it, his back arching off the blankets and down into contact with them as though he didn’t know whether it was a pleasure or a torment.  
  
 _Or both._  
  
Harry leaned down and sucked at Draco’s throat again. He liked doing that. He liked throwing his back into it. He liked thrusting and watching Draco thrash in response, his mouth open and his tongue dangling down until it almost touched his cheek. Draco gasped and hissed, and Harry picked up the pace. The bed danced beneath them, but still didn’t break.  
  
Harry felt a tightening in his balls and his back, and finally realized what was missing, what he hadn’t done yet, and what he ought to have done. He reached down and began to stroke Draco’s cock, trying to time them, as best as he could, to his own rough thrusts. That way, both of them sort of got stroked at the same time.  
  
Sort of. Harry reckoned that he didn’t have to make sense when he was blowing Draco’s mind as much as he obviously was.  
  
Draco froze again, and humped the air so hungrily that he nearly slammed Harry in the face, and began to come. Harry hadn’t known—  
  
He caught his breath and began to hammer his hips home. Not something he’d planned on, but he hadn’t known—  
  
It was so  _satisfying_ to be inside Draco when he came, to feel the tight squeezing and the pleasure and know that he was the one who had given it to Draco. Who was  _still_ giving it to Draco. He trembled and urged himself on, and finally collapsed over Draco, leg muscles giving out.  
  
He almost lost track of the moment when he came, pleasure and satisfaction were so mixed together that he couldn’t take them apart. He whimpered into the pillow and thrust once more into Draco, who felt limp and relaxed and receptive.  
  
He didn’t have much time to lie there, though, because Draco began to kiss his neck. Harry laughed softly and turned his head. “You still have the energy for that?” he mumbled, or something like it, because  _he_ didn’t have the energy to move his mouth around the words. “I didn’t do it right.”  
  
“You did everything right,” Draco said, by his ear. Harry sighed and closed his eyes. His magic was running and dancing through his body, but he didn’t want to use it right then. He thought he didn’t have control of it, and would probably blast something to smithereens.  
  
“Mind sleeping like this?” he asked. It must have been clear enough, because Draco laughed into his ear.  
  
“No.”  
  
And Harry let go, and slipped into the first sleep of pure bliss he’d had since he became a Dark Lord.  
  
*  
  
Draco stroked Harry’s hair, and shivered a little.  
  
He had come over to tell Harry about politics in the Ministry that his allies had found, and had forgotten it completely when Harry started speaking to him. Maybe that was just as well. His entire body was still tingling pleasantly, and  _that_ wouldn’t have happened if he had kept straight on course.   
  
Draco kissed Harry’s head, behind the ear, and rolled over. He was plenty warm, with Harry draped on top of him and the blankets puddled around them like miniature fortress walls. He just needed to ease the angle of his neck a little.  
  
The pillow behind him suddenly humped up and did that. Draco started and glanced at Harry. No, he was asleep. Draco didn’t think anyone could fake those shattering snores.  
  
Draco glanced around uneasily. “Thank you?” he asked, because there was no way he could make it a statement. Was Harry’s magic watching out for him even when Harry himself was dead to the world?  
  
There was no answer, except the pillow growing a little more comfortable and firmer behind his neck. Draco swallowed and lay back down again, because that made as much sense as anything else.  
  
It was…  
  
That was blazingly beautiful, was what it was.  
  
And it made his Ministry news seem as petty as Draco’s aches and pains.  
  
Draco smiled and closed his eyes.  _No one can hurt me, not here, with him._  
  



	5. Persephone's Approval

“I think you were going to tell me something when you came in, but we got so occupied that I forgot what it was.”  
  
Harry’s voice was thick and lazy, and he was padding around by the fire still naked. Draco, lounging in the bed, examined Harry’s arse and found it good. Then he chuckled and rolled over on the pillow that immediately became even more comfortable. At the moment, he thought he would find anything good.  
  
He still felt as though a slight trembling could invade his limbs any second and drop him to the ground. Part of him was still soaring, riding, gasping. Part of him couldn’t wait to be like that again.  
  
But he reminded himself that he had come here for a reason, and wrestled his mind back from the vistas that Harry had opened for him. There was another part of him, one that always stood back from what was happening at the moment and thought about something, and he called it to his aid now.  
  
“Yes,” he said finally. “My contacts in the Ministry said that a certain law is being passed against you.”  
  
“By the Wizengamot?” Harry turned around with a feast that the house-elves must have sent through the fire from the kitchen. His mouth watering, Draco sat up and reached for a scone covered in melted, dripping butter, only for Harry to swat his hand away. Draco glared, and Harry picked up the scone and smiled.  
  
“I want to feed you,” he said.  
  
There wasn’t a lot Draco could bring up to object to  _that_. He leaned back and opened his mouth instead, and Harry broke off a piece of the scone and placed it on his tongue. Draco shut his eyes to eat it. Yes, the butter had soaked into the bread, which itself was fluffy enough to start coming to pieces right away, and altogether the warmth mingled with the delicious melted feeling in his body and made it even  _better_.  
  
Draco ate that, and the clotted cream that Harry offered him on his fingers, and then sipped from the cup of tea that Harry held up. Finally, he had to lie back on the bed, his arms folded over his stomach, and shake his head. They hadn’t slept  _that_ long, and Draco had been eating all that day, during dinners with some of his political supporters.  
  
“Not hungry?” Harry began eating himself, not taking his eyes off Draco’s face. It made Draco shudder in delight, to feel that searing attention so solely focused on him. “I would have thought you would be, with all the energy we burned up lately.”  
  
Draco could feel his face flushing, as warm as the buttered bread. It was ridiculous, because he was an  _adult_ and one who had chosen to go to bed with Harry entirely of his own free will. But he did clear his throat and said, “I was working off a large dinner when I—when I slept with you.”  
  
“Ah.” Harry’s mouth curved lazily, his eyes growing even brighter, which Draco hadn’t known was  _possible_. “By the Wizengamot?”  
  
It took Draco a long minute to blink and get back on track, from the conversation they were having to the one that had got sidetracked when Harry approached the bed with food in his hands. Then he nodded. “Yes. They say that they’re going to outlaw anyone who accepts you as their Lord.”  
  
“What does that mean, exactly?” Harry licked cream from his own fingers, and Draco shifted to throw a leg over his groin. Harry gave him a wicked grin. A second later, the bed tilted, exposing Draco whether or not he wanted to be.  
  
Draco caught his breath, but managed to concentrate on politics. If Harry could, despite having less of a head for it, then he should be able to. He  _was_ going to be Minister. “They aren’t going to let them have jobs in the wizarding world, or homes. Any business is supposed to refuse their money. Their children can’t get wands or go to primary school or get adopted in the wizarding world.”  
  
Harry’s head cocked, and just like that, the warm mask dropped away. Draco heard a hammering at the window and looked out. Persephone was hovering there, her wings shedding curling torrents of blue-black flame.  
  
Harry rose and padded over to let her in, although Draco knew very well that he could have waved a hand and melted the glass away from the window if he wanted to. He never took his eyes from Draco, though, not even when Persephone flew in and settled on his bare shoulder. “That part about the children was specific?”  
  
Draco frowned. “That’s what my contacts at the Ministry said.” He drew some of the heaped black blankets over his groin. He didn’t like the look Persephone was directing at him, as if she was measuring certain parts of his body against her beak.  
  
Harry exhaled hard and scratched beneath Persephone’s chin. She nudged him with her crested head and crooned.  
  
“What does she want?” Draco asked, and then he thought he knew. “You want to hurt someone over this?”  
  
“I think they targeted children on purpose,” Harry muttered. “They know I want to protect them and that most of my students at Hogwarts aren’t of age. This will affect those who go to Hogwarts, too, won’t it?” He looked at Draco for the first time since he’d let Persephone come in. His eyes glittered and glowed.  
  
“My contacts weren’t that specific,” Draco said. “But yes, I think they are ultimately going to try and penalize the people who chose to attend Hogwarts and send their children here, as well.”  
  
“Of course they are,” Harry said softly.  
  
Draco blinked. For a moment, he thought Harry was changing into a black phoenix himself, or so it seemed. There was a glittering purple aura around his body that spread out in concentric rings, rising and thinning as it went, but his outline also blurred and wavered, and that was alarming enough.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Something about his voice reached Harry, or made it possible for him to come back. He shook his head, and exhaled, and refocused on Draco. The purple aura disappeared. On his shoulder, Persephone settled down, stared, and then pecked Harry’s cheek.  
  
Harry ignored the small stream of blood now flowing down his face, smiling at Draco again. “Thank you,” he said. “You reminded me that, after all, I have more things to do than punish the Wizengamot. I did already try that, too. It doesn’t seem to have stuck.”  
  
“What are you going to do, then?” Draco leaned forwards in interest. He hadn’t thought the news that important when he was contemplating it from the perspective of being Harry’s lover, but it would affect him as Harry’s ally.  
  
Harry stared into the distance for a moment, and Persephone fluffed out her tail. When Harry didn’t say whatever it was she wanted him to say, though, she took off and landed on her perch, sulking.  
  
“I’m going to leave them alone,” Harry said. “I’m going to let people who want to swear to me swear to me, and grant them full protections as long as they’re part of my court. I can even give them jobs. There are dozens of things that could be done around Hogwarts that aren’t being done, mostly because I don’t have enough people. And of course I’ll protect the children who attend.”  
  
“What about wands?” Draco had to admit, that was the part of the law that most concerned him. The Ministry had regulated wands to an extent before, limiting the purchase of them to wizards eleven and above, and putting the Trace on underage wizards’ wands, but they hadn’t interfered like  _this._ Ollivander’s had always been an independent business. If they tried to do this much to influence the people who swore to Harry, they might do something different to others who opposed their policies, whether or not their allegiance was to Harry.  
  
“The solution to that is pretty simple,” Harry said, and only seemed to realize that he needed to explain when Draco looked patiently at him. “There’s going to have to be a wandmaker here.”  
  
Draco blinked. “They don’t grow on trees, you know.”  
  
“Neither do wands.” Harry turned and strode to his window, looking out over a view that Draco knew the castle changed each day in case Harry grew bored. “But they’re made. I’ll send owls abroad. There might be a wandmaker who’s stifling somewhere. Someone like Ollivander stays in business for a long, long time. I can probably find someone who’s been trained as an apprentice but can’t open their own business.”  
  
“You’re talking about making an independent nation here,” Draco said, a little dazed. “Your own court and Hogsmeade and Ministry and Diagon Alley in one.”  
  
Harry turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “What did you think establishing an independent court would mean, Draco? Of course I have to run the school, but that can’t be all I do, not if people start coming here to live and not just work or go to classes.”  
  
Draco nodded slowly. “Don’t you think this is going a little beyond what you saw at first?”  
  
“Saw?” Harry snorted. “I declared myself Dark Lord without thinking about it. I thought it was the one title that people might be scared enough not to challenge. Hah,” he added moodily. “I should have realized that, because it’s me, they would have challenged me if I said I was a  _Light_ Lord. They always have to have someone to fight, and they’ve been uneasy about me since I was a bloody abused child.”  
  
“Your power is rather unique, you know,” Draco murmured, seeing a chance to bring up something he had wondered about. “And I don’t mean your magic. No one knew about that until recently. Don’t you think that they worried about what you might do with your name and fame?”  
  
“I’m not going to use it now,” Harry said. “What would be the point? Everyone who needs to hear about me has probably already heard. The Ministry hasn’t been able to keep this  _quiet_.”  
  
Draco shrugged, frowning a little. He didn’t know what to say, but the words rolled around on his tongue and finally came out, almost independent of his brain. “I just thought—if you had used some of that power before you became a Dark Lord and set up your court, then maybe you wouldn’t have as many problems with the Ministry.”  
  
“Maybe not,” Harry agreed. “But any decision I make now is always going to be overshadowed by this one. I’m going to be the Dark Lord who used to be the Boy-Who-Lived, not just the Boy-Who-Lived.”  
  
Draco nodded in reluctant agreement, and admiration. “And you say that you don’t know anything about politics.”  
  
Harry tilted his head, a challenging gleam in his eyes. “Everything I know about politics, I learned from people trying to kill me. That might give me some experience, but it rather colors my views, too, don’t you think?”  
  
*  
  
“Hello, Anne.” Harry kept his voice low and calm. Exploding into recriminations against her parents wouldn’t help Anne, and she wasn’t ready for questions. But if she was going to stay in Hogwarts, she had to know about him. “My name is Harry.”  
  
Anne stood beside Hagrid at the door of his house, pale and quiet. She had dark hair, but her face was so white in comparison that it made her look like a vampire. She glanced up at Hagrid once, and he sniffled and patted her on the head. Harry was relieved that he did it lightly, so as not to crush the little girl into the floor.  
  
“And this is Persephone,” Harry added. He had thought about leaving Persephone behind, but he had decided he would rather have Anne know about everything that might scare her at once, rather than having it spring out on her later. Knowing Persephone, the springing out might be literal.  
  
The black phoenix on his shoulder stirred. Harry stood calmly, watching as she extended her neck down towards Anne. If she made a move to harm or frighten the girl, then Harry would hit her and hurt her with all the power of his magic.   
  
Persephone had to know that, either because she knew him or because she was picking up the general impression from the aura around him. She examined Anne minutely, from the top of her brown head to the bottom of her feet, still in small Muggle shoes, and then bobbed her head and sat up. Her tail fluffed out, but for once, she didn’t drop a load of shit down Harry’s back for him to deal with.  
  
Anne stared with open eyes and a rising hand. Harry watched closely. He didn’t control Persephone as well as he would like. If Anne touched her, she might decide to strike and deal with the punishment later.  
  
But Anne only whispered, as if it would be bad if anyone heard her, “What kind of bird is  _that_?”  
  
Harry smiled. “She’s a phoenix.” Before Persephone could dig a claw into his collarbone, he added, “Ordinary phoenixes are red, and they don’t die. They grow old and then rise again in flames. They’re reborn over and over. Persephone is a black phoenix, though. I made her to save my life. I don’t know how’ll she burn yet.”  
  
Anne stared at him, and then at the phoenix again. When she spoke a second time, it was in a whisper that Harry thought was full of awe, not just fear. “Does that mean that you’re not going to die, either?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “The first time she burns, I should learn something.” He glanced sideways at Persephone, who watched him without fear and without comment. “But I don’t really control her. She can help me and protect me, but only when she wants to.”  
  
“I want something like that.”  
  
“Like a phoenix?” Harry blinked. He doubted that Persephone would agree to be bound to Anne instead of him, and he didn’t know that he would want to do it even if she did. It would be like handing Anne a knife slicked in blood and insisting that it was  _her_ responsibility if she cut herself.  
  
“No,” Anne breathed. “Something that can protect me. Not because they have to. Not because—” She faltered and glanced at Hagrid. Harry had to hide a smile, wondering what sorts of things Hagrid had told her about Hogwarts. “Because it wants to.”  
  
And Harry nodded, because he could imagine the fierce desire that had invaded her, in a house where she had thought no one would ever come to get her, when she didn’t even have the comforting knowledge that the people raising and abusing her weren’t her  _real_ parents that Harry had had. He cupped his hands in front of him and focused his magic into them.  
  
Persephone began to sing. It was an edged song, a noise like that knife Harry had imagined scraping against a whetstone. Anne started back and might have hidden behind Hagrid, but he held her lightly in place.  
  
Harry started out with light. It seemed to him that Anne might want something that would shine in the darkness and could lead her around Hogwarts.  
  
Other than that, he kept his eyes on Anne and let her reactions guide him. He wasn’t surprised when she shuddered as the light began to grow into the image of a snake, so instead he bent it and made it the image of a four-legged animal. Anne relaxed. Harry nodded. So a mammal and not a bird, then.  
  
Although wings might be nice. He made pointed wings grow out of its back, and Anne caught her breath and held it.  
  
Harry lowered his head and breathed on the magic, although he could have done it some other way and was doing this mainly for its dramatic potential. The shape swirled and eddied, looking for a second like fire filled with twinkling lights. And then it solidified, and a winged cat, orange with pale white stripes, was curled asleep in Harry’s hands.  
  
Anne opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Harry bowed and presented her with the cat, which woke up a moment later. Harry had been half-afraid that he would have to keep guiding it with his mind in its, even if it was a creation of his own magic and split apart from him, but it was fine on its own, like Persephone.  
  
She bit him on the ear. Harry grinned. This time, he knew why. At least he was getting better at reading her moods.  
  
The cat leaped from his hands into Anne’s arms. She stared at him and then raised her eyes to Harry. Harry thought he knew why. She had wanted something that would protect her, but this cat looked like an ordinary animal, if a friendly one. It was rubbing its head against Anne’s cheek and purring.  
  
“He can fly and find someone to bring if you’re in danger,” Harry told her quietly. “And watch.” He worked his face into the hardest scowl he could and drew back his arm as if he was going to fling magic, although he watched Anne. He wanted to make the cat react, but it was no use if he  _really_ scared her.  
  
The cat promptly turned around and hissed. It didn’t just look bigger, the way a cat fluffing itself up would look, but actually  _grew_ bigger. The white stripes on its body glowed and folded away from the fur, and turned into jagged knives. It spat at Harry. Its teeth were fangs, now.  
  
“He’ll protect you against everybody,” Harry told her. “Even me.”  
  
Anne buried her face in the cat’s fur and held it. She was trembling a little. But then she looked up at him and offered him a smile that trembled a little, too, and Harry knew that he had made the right decision.  
  
Anne would take some time and be afraid and have to deal with the remnants of her abuse just the way Harry had had to, but she was in a good place now, and she had a good protector. She would be all right.


	6. A Hidden Face

“You can’t get away with not confronting people forever, you know.”  
  
Ron’s heavy voice came from behind him. Harry ignored him for a second, still nodding to the wandmaker whose head floated in the fire. His name was Lorraine, and he had his own business, currently in Belgium, that he wasn’t anxious to leave, but he had an apprentice he had said might be willing to try England.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said. They’d had to use a Translation Charm, but he was sure it had gone correctly. His magic wouldn’t let him mess up something that was so important to the future of Hogwarts, he thought. At least, not while he was in Hogwarts. “Tell him I look forward to his arrival.”  
  
Lorraine smiled, bowed once, and disappeared, his beard appearing to puff into an excess of white flame. Persephone looked up briefly from her perch. She had been more interested in fire than usual lately, leading Harry to think her burning day might be near.  
  
He stood up and crossed the room to stroke her back. Persephone snapped at him, a flash of her beak and wings so quick that only the way Harry understood her permitted him to pull his hand back in time. Ron sucked in a sharp breath behind him.  
  
Harry turned around and leaned casually on Persephone’s perch. “What do you mean? I had confrontations with Hermione and McGonagall, didn’t I?”  
  
Ron grimaced, but didn’t say any of the many things Harry was sure he could say about Hermione. “Only the one McGonagall forced on you,” he said. “I mean that you can’t get away with not attacking the Ministry forever. I’m sure that Malfoy brought you the news of the laws the Wizengamot is trying to pass now.”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry said. “But I’ve taught all the lessons I can to the Wizengamot, I think. If the ones about personal loss of control and prestige don’t stick, which ones  _can_ I expect to do it?”  
  
Ron just stared at him in silence, and Harry sighed. “Between people urging me to hold off from interfering in the election, people urging me to attack the Ministry, people telling me not to cause a war in the wizarding world, and people who would be perfectly happy to see me torture their enemies, I’m not sure which advice you want me to pay attention to.”  
  
“Who would be perfectly happy to—”  
  
Harry jerked a thumb at Persephone, partially because it was true but partially because he was sure Ron would blame Draco if he didn’t. “Tell me, should I listen to her? She’s accurate about threats to me, and she made a good emissary to the centaurs. But her instincts aren’t the best. I can be a little surer of human people, sometimes. But everyone is convinced that they know what’s best, and most of them have good reasons. It seems to come down to who I can trust.”  
  
“You trust me, don’t you?” Ron’s eyes were enormous. “More than anyone?”  
  
Harry nodded. He didn’t want to make comparisons between how much he trusted Draco and how much he trusted Ron, especially when those things tended to happen for different reasons and in different ways, and his trust for Hermione was in abeyance right now. He didn’t know if she was working against him yet, but he didn’t know  _anything,_ one way or the other.  
  
“All right then. Listen.” Ron took a step towards him. “You may think that the Ministry won’t care about you setting up a little independent state inside their borders, but they’ll attack as soon as they learn what you mean to do. And if more people flee here, where can you put them all?”  
  
Harry did snort at that. “You’re worried about people filling up Hogwarts? Out of all the things you  _could_ be worrying about?”  
  
Ron still had his sense of humor, luckily. A smile sprang to life in his eyes as he chuckled. “All right. You have a fair point. But—say they could live in Hogwarts. How are you going to feed them? Pay them? Give them work? If everyone who could come to you for shelter decides to see if you’re serious about it?”  
  
“I don’t know  _all_ the answers yet,” Harry said. “But I’m working on a solution to one of the problems you mentioned. Tell me what you think of this.” He’d have liked to show the letter to Draco—but he had meetings this morning—or to Briseis—but she was working on an official announcement to the Ministry and the newspapers about his alliances with the centaurs and merfolk. So he gave the letter to Ron instead.  
  
Ron took the letter, glanced from it to Harry, and cocked his head. “Did you write this?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “I reckoned they won’t care as much as some of the other people I could write to would about pretty words. And everyone who might have helped me was busy.”  
  
“I would have helped you,” Ron said, and started reading. “I just usually see your handwriting as being messy.”  
  
Harry shrugged and petted Persephone again, this time until she tried to take his ring finger off at the knuckle. He thought neat writing would impress the people he was contacting more than a messy scrawl, too, but he thought they could probably interpret that if they wanted to. They must see worse on old documents.  
  
A second later, Ron gasped, hard enough that Harry leaned forwards, a little concerned for the state of his friend’s breathing. Ron looked at him, face pale and tongue almost hanging out.  
  
“Harry,” he whispered. “You  _never_.”  
  
Harry half-smiled at him. “Well, there’s no reason not to try, is there? I made alliances with the merfolk and the centaurs. And from everything I’ve learned about them in the past few days, they don’t pay much attention to the wizarding governments. They went on functioning under Voldemort’s regime the same as they did under the legitimate Ministry. They might accept the offer and they might not, but there’s no reason not to ask.”  
  
“You’re talking about stealing Gringotts under the Ministry’s nose,” Ron said flatly, waving the letter.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Remind me never to let  _you_  write the official biography of my reign. You would fill the whole thing full of melodramatic adjectives when it only  _works_ if it’s simple.” That got him an even heartier scowl. “No. All I’m doing is asking the goblins if I could put together a private account and transfer some Galleons into it from my vaults and other people who give me authorization to do so. That could include people who are leaving Diagon Alley for my court, of course. And then they could be paid out of that.”  
  
“The goblins would never do that,” Ron said, but he eyed the letter uneasily.  
  
“Maybe,” said Harry. “Maybe not. But there are things I’m willing to give them. Concessions, the way I’ve made to the centaurs and the merfolk. Protection if they wanted it. More respect than they would get from ordinary wizards.” He paused, and gently took away the edge of his cloak from Persephone’s reaching claw. “Maybe even a gift.”  
  
“What kind of gift would a goblin value, except money?” Ron shook his head again.  
  
Harry made a sharp gesture with his hand. The walls of Hogwarts had brought him what he was thinking of earlier, but he had left it concealed behind the stones, because seeing it out in the open might lead people off the topic. Now the stones pulled back, and showed the Sword of Gryffindor lying in the middle of a niche in the wall that might have been made for it.  
  
Ron stared at it, then at Harry. Harry shrugged. “I know that they made it for Gryffindor and he didn’t really steal it, but they want it back. This could be a way of showing them that I want their goodwill. It could create a debt that they would feel bound to repay.”  
  
“But you can’t let them have it!” Ron blurted. “It has to be here for a true Gryffindor to pull it from the Hat!”  
  
Harry snorted. “And you think being in Gringotts would keep it from coming back when it was needed?”  
  
Ron hesitated. “Well, no, now that you mention it,” he said. “But it’s an artifact of the school. Are you going to give it away like it’s nothing?”  
  
“No,” Harry snapped. “I’m going to give it away like it’s something fit to buy money for my people, and maybe underground access to food markets and goblin trading networks, when we start having to worry about buying food and other things.”  
  
Ron stared blankly at him. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”  
  
Harry half-grinned and ran his hand through his hair. “I didn’t think it through when I jumped ahead and declared myself Dark Lord. Hermione was right about that. But I’m trying to  _think_ now, and determine what I should have done in the first place. I trust the Sword of Gryffindor to come back if we need it. But I don’t trust myself to be able to buy the goblins’ aid without it.”  
  
Ron bit his lip in silence for a while. Then he handed the letter Harry had written to the goblins back. “I think there’s a high chance they’ll go for it. But you should be careful, since we  _did_ break into Gringotts during the war.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “If they blame me for that, then I’ll make sure to remove all my gold from the bank as soon as possible, and advise anyone else who wants to live in my court to do the same. And then I’ll figure out something else.”  
  
"It's war, no matter what happens." Ron's voice was soft, his eyes troubled. "You know that, don't you? War with Gringotts if you tell people to take their money out of the bank. War with the Ministry if you succeed in negotiating with the goblins. You're telling them that you'll succeed in living your way, or you'll fall."  
  
"I'm aware of the risk." Harry spread his hands. "I just don't think it's unlike the risks I've been taking so far. I'll do what I need to do to increase my people's safety and what they can keep, instead of give up, when they come to me. If that brings me into open conflict with the Ministry or Gringotts, fine. I can only offer what I can offer."  
  
"Will you ever act instead of react?" Ron said.  
  
Harry had to give a short laugh. "What is this letter going to be?"  
  
Ron shook his head, his hair rustling. "You're reacting to what the Ministry did to you, or what they're going to do when they pass this law. That's not the same thing as taking an action that--I don't know, makes a declaration."  
  
"I made a declaration when I proclaimed myself Dark Lord," Harry said. "You might as well claim that everything the Ministry has done since then is a reaction to me."  
  
"But you only did that because they were going to close down Hogwarts," Ron said. "It still doesn't count."  
  
Harry laughed and held up his hands. "You're cleverer than I am. So go prove it. Make any changes that you think you need to to the letter, and then bring it back to me. In the meantime, I have a history class to teach." He was introducing some fifth-years to the history of the first war with Voldemort today. He'd only had a brief chance to revise the books himself, but if worse came to worse, he could tell the story of how it had ended. The tale of his mother's heroism was one that he never got tired of telling.  
  
Ron sighed hard enough to make his lips ruffle. "Fine. I don't know that this is the best thing to do, but you're right, I can't think of anything better."  
  
Harry clapped his shoulder, grabbed his books, and went out the door. Persephone stirred once as if she would follow him, then settled back on the perch.  
  
Harry was glad. She caused him enough problems without deciding to set someone in the classroom on fire for fun.  
  
*  
  
"Minister...ial  _Candidate_ Malfoy."  
  
Draco let himself grin like a wolf as he reached out to grasp Azalina Rahad's hand. She was a medium-tall witch with brown skin, dark hair that she wore pulled back right now with a few silver clips, and eyes that watched him, waiting for some response. "Commander Rahad. Looking forward to the day that promotes a change of title?"  
  
"As are you, it seems." Rahad's hand briefly tightened on his. "I do not bear that title."  
  
"Not at all," Draco said, and turned to escort her further into the party. He had nearly filled the great dining room of Malfoy Manor. Supporters of Tillipop circulated everywhere, caged and chased and chivvied by his own. Some people would leave here tonight converted, and others would leave scared, and others bribed. Draco didn't much care which, as long as Tillipop's more powerful supporters stopped being a threat. "I give you that which you've earned, by right."  
  
Rahad gave him a tight smile. Draco smiled back, more naturally. So Rosenthal's information about Rahad being in line for promotion in the Custodes, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's semi-secret corps that focused on protecting wizarding Britain's interests in international politics, was true. And that meant so was the information that Tillipop had turned her down for the command, saying that they didn't need "anyone foreign-looking" of a high rank among the Custodes.  
  
Draco could have shaken his head over Tillipop's blindness, but he didn't. It was the kind of thing that a lot of "normal" wizards, the group that Tillipop hoped to appeal to, would think. And Tillipop had counted on that group to help him into the election.  
  
The problem was, the Ministry, the group that should have done the most to help the Minister, was no longer one with Tillipop in anything except perhaps fear of Harry. And there were people like Rahad who wouldn't care about that, as long as something got  _done_.  
  
"I do think that it's a privilege to be here," Rahad murmured, extending a hand to pluck a glass off a tray carried by a house-elf. "And to receive an invitation that was not worded as were your invitations to some of my colleagues."  
  
Draco veiled his eyes with lowered lids. "Is it my fault that some of them mistrust me so much they would not come except if they could take it as a challenge?"  
  
"Not your  _fault_ ," Rahad said consideringly, as she sipped the champagne in the glass. Several small amulets bound here and there in the folds of her robes flashed a bit, neutralizing any poison or potion that might have been in the champagne. She had worn them openly enough for Draco to see, and that told Draco exactly what her balance was in the delicate dance they were doing. "Your choice, perhaps."  
  
Draco smiled at her. "I think that your willing acceptance and my willing invitation augur good things for the future."  
  
Rahad smiled back and bowed a little, moving away. Draco followed her track with his eyes and smiled again when he saw where she was going. Jackson Tudor had been a thorn in his side, because while he didn't like Tillipop much, he kept insisting that no one who had done  _anything_ wrong in the past should be in the Ministry, or Minister, or a member of the Wizengamot, or any other position of power. And he had an annoyingly clean past.  
  
Rahad was the thorn in  _his_ side, though, and if she could provoke Tudor into a public argument, then his reputation would have the beginnings of a stain.  
  
"Candidate Malfoy."  
  
Draco turned around, wondering who the next person was that he needed to greet. Rosenthal hadn't bothered giving him a list for the party tonight, telling him there were too many important targets, and she would have to trust him to know which ones needed his personal attention and which didn't sometime.  
  
His interest sharpened when he realized that this witch wore a thick cloak, one with red embroidery around the black hood. That might mean she was an Unspeakable or Auror reluctant to show her face. If his campaign had reached that deep, then they had done better than Draco had expected this early on.  
  
He reached for a glass of champagne and held it out to her, but the woman shook her head so frantically that Draco raised his brows and retained it for himself. "I do not know you," he said. "Will you give me a sign so I will know who you are?"  
  
 _And not an enemy,_ was the unspoken corollary to those words. On the other hand, Draco wasn't much worried. He had not only allies but some defenses that only Rosenthal knew about within his beck and call.  
  
The woman hesitated, and cast a rapid Privacy Charm around them, before reaching immediately for her hood. Draco nodded his approval. She couldn't retain the Privacy Charm for too long without causing unwanted curiosity.  
  
He felt both nod and smile freeze when her hood fell to her shoulders.  
  
"Look," said Hermione Granger, staring at him. "I need to know what you're doing, and what you  _really_ mean to do when you're Minister, and whether you're influenced by Harry."


	7. A Gift to the Goblins of Gringotts

Draco raised his wand and cast a few spells of his own. One dissipated Granger’s Privacy Charm. They couldn’t have that up for long, or it would attract more attention than it would ever deflect.  
  
Granger opened her mouth—to shout, Draco thought—when the charm fell, but then she seemed to feel the mask of a glamour settling on her face. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. Some of the Ministry employees coming to speak with Draco were high-ranking and wouldn’t want anyone who saw them to know who they were.  
  
Granger bit her lip and glanced up at him, then turned her eyes back to the floor. “Thanks,” she mumbled.  
  
Draco inclined his head and held out his arm, angling it at the precise crook that a pure-blood man should use when offering to escort a pure-blood woman. He and Granger were the only ones here who knew, or should be the only ones who did, that she wasn’t one of those. “Would you like to go out into the garden?” he asked, raising his voice enough that the people hovering nearby and waiting to talk to him could hear. “The view is stunning. And I think the clear air might help you to recover your breath.” Another excuse for being alone.  
  
Granger’s eyes fluttered once, in the uncertain manner that Draco was more used to seeing from Rosenthal than her. Then she breathed out and took his arm. “I’d like that,” she murmured back, and if Draco’s glamour hadn’t concealed her voice, Draco doubted that anyone there knew her well enough to notice the mismatch between it and her face.  
  
Draco almost hovered over her as they stepped through the heavy glass doors, open in honor of the party, and out into the garden. That was etiquette, too, although Draco had thought that a woman who’d grown faint in the heavy air of a crowded ballroom shouldn’t have people  _breathing_ into her face. His mother had only frowned at him when he brought it up and said that was the way it worked, and as he had been raised to be polite, he would do it if he ever had to be alone with a pure-blood woman in such a situation.  
  
And his mother had a way of getting what she wanted, Draco thought wryly. Not unlike the woman on his arm, who kept her steps slow and gentle until they reached a patch of night-blooming pale flowers surrounded by low brick walls. Draco leaned down as if to pluck her a flower, but really brushed a brick with one finger that made another, more subtle, Privacy Charm spring up. Now they would be able to speak freely, and no one would be able to approach them within five hundred feet without warning.  
  
“I plan to do lots of things when I’m Minister,” he said, straightening up and turning to face her. “And I think Harry will only have as much influence on those plans as the resident Dark Lord of Hogwarts should have.”  
  
“I know it’s more than that,” said Granger, and her eyes were so dark that Draco kept himself from taking hold of his wand only by asserting reason over his instincts. “I saw the way he looked at you when you were under that mind control spell and he was researching ways to wake you up.”  
  
 _So she does have more knowledge than I thought she did. Wonderful._ For a moment, Draco wondered why Harry hadn’t told him that, but it was easy enough to guess. Harry had never thought Granger would seek Draco out.  
  
Draco looked down into her eyes and said gently, “Shouldn’t you be rejoicing that the next Minister has a reason to leave your best friend alone, instead of persecuting him?”  
  
Granger turned away, stooping over the night-blooming flowers as if admiring them. Or maybe it was to hide her eyes while her breath came out in a hiss. “I know  _very well_ that you would be an unjust Minister if you were focused on him.”  
  
Draco blinked. He blinked again. Granger looked up at him again as those blinks passed by, apparently wanting to see his reaction.  
  
Then Draco began to choke with laughter. He cast another spell that would muffle it more strongly, because there were people here who would give a great deal to know what made him laugh, and he had no intention of placing another weapon into their hands. But he had to lean against a small, slender tree nearby to try and stop choking, and it just  _didn’t work._ On and on it went, his little gasps and cries, while Granger stared at him, looking first bewildered and then furious.  
  
“What—what did you think I would do if I wasn’t involved with Harry?” Draco finally gasped, leaning forwards, wheezing. He made the words come out around the laughter, though. He would have to get back to the party soon, and Granger was Gryffindor enough to stomp in there and denounce him if he waited too long. “Of course I’m not going to be fair and just the way a Gryffindor thinks I should be.”  
  
He straightened up and shook his head at Granger. “My dear girl, what the Ministry needs is someone who knows what is  _important._ Tillipop has offered his friends plum positions and engaged in nepotism. That’s expected, really. But he’s carried it too far, and started to obsess over his personal enemies and use Ministry resources to punish  _them,_ even when they’re useful or important in the political structure. You can see that in the way that he kept sending Aurors after Harry, when it was stupid to do so. You bribe your enemies or make truces or eliminate them by turning up scandals from their pasts if you’re Minister, you don’t just smash them. As someone intelligent I spoke to earlier said, we need a Minister with a sense of style. I have it.”  
  
Granger was so pale that Draco would have offered her a drink and a chair if she’d been a different person. As it was, he doubted that she would be appreciative if he did. So he waited, and a second later she snapped out of her shock.  
  
“But that means you’ll favor Harry,” she whispered. “Give him a Ministry position?”  
  
“ _No_ ,” said Draco, exasperated. Honestly. He’d heard that Granger had been working with and against the Ministry for the same length of time as Harry and Weasley. That meant she should have some idea how things worked. She might not approve of them, she might want to change them, but she should know how her enemies thought.  
  
 _Then again, she didn’t even know how her best friend thought, or she wouldn’t have turned against him with visions of him becoming an all-powerful Dark Lord._  
  
“I can’t give him anything like that,” Draco continued, when he saw Granger paying attention to him. “I know that. He’s too much the Ministry’s open enemy right now, and we’re going to have to meet in secret. I don’t think we can ever reveal that we have a relationship, at least not in the conventional sense of the word. What I can do is try to ease tensions between him and the Ministry, and that would be beneficial for the people I’m supposed to lead as well as him. That’s what I’ll do.”  
  
Granger straightened up. She had thrown off her fainting fit as if it had never threatened. Draco had to admire her for that, though perhaps for nothing else. She could cause trouble like no one else, he thought, except perhaps Weasley. And Weasley had chosen not to leave Harry’s side.  
  
“I thought you needed someone,” Granger whispered. “That you were a helpless victim of his influence, and would welcome someone else interfering.”  
  
“That was your first mistake, then,” Draco said, looking at her with half-lidded eyes, no longer seeing a need to keep the thick contempt from his voice. “Malfoys are never  _helpless_.”  
  
Granger shook her head. “The wizarding world needs a  _real_ Minister. Someone who will keep the needs of both humans and magical creatures in mind. Someone who will know how to resist Harry and keep the world from falling under the dominion of a Dark Lord.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes in spite of himself. It seemed nothing he could say would make any difference to her. Even telling the truth didn’t. So he might as well show everything else openly, too. “Planning to run yourself?”  
  
Granger gaped at him. “What? No. I wouldn’t want a position so steeped in corruption—”  
  
She stopped.  
  
Draco watched her, and let his smile widen further when he saw the way she stared at his flowers. “Yes,” he said softly. “You pictured yourself as the rescuer of an innocent wizarding world who needed you, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s more complicated than that. You’re smart enough to understand. The Ministry functions that way because the people who work for it  _want_ it to, and there is always going to be a certain amount of corruption inside it. I must admit,” he let himself add in a musing voice, “I’m glad Harry chose to be a Dark Lord instead of hanging around the Ministry and trying to clean up the corruption in it. He never could have succeeded without destroying everyone’s free will, and that would have broken his heart.”  
  
Granger jerked her head up. “That’s not true! He’s trying to destroy their free will anyway, just from the outside!”  
  
Draco’s amusement, and his admiration, fled. “That is  _enough_ ,” he said, his voice deepening into a hiss that made Granger back up a step and look as if she would reach for her wand. Of course, if she did, there would be house-elves on her in seconds. Maybe she knew that, because she kept her hand trembling at her side, but didn’t actually complete the gesture.  
  
“If he was going to do that,” Draco continued, “he would have done it already, and you would have been his first victim. One of his best friends? Who accused him to his face and proposed to leave him? You don’t think he would have fallen to the temptation to keep you at his side, if he was going to fall?”  
  
Granger shook her head. “But that  _power…_ you don’t understand, Malfoy. What he could do with it…”  
  
“I do know,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. It was too bad that some of the things he could have told her about Harry’s power and the gentle way he treated Draco were secrets too intimate for him to want to give up. “He could make me into a puppet. He could burn the Ministry to the ground. And  _he doesn’t._ I don’t know if he could ever convince you, because you see potential for abuse as the same thing as abuse, but that’s what it’s like. He wants to remain the way he is, without corrupting anyone’s mind, and that’s the way he will be. If he has enough power to control everyone, he has enough to control his own actions.”  
  
Granger just stared at him, eyes shadowed. Then she said, “But he  _could_.”  
  
“And I have the power to compel one of my house-elves to start smashing its face into these bricks until its brain is pulped,” Draco said coldly. “It doesn’t mean I would.”  
  
Granger looked sick. “That—that has to be stopped, too. I—”  
  
“I understand a lot more about you now,” Draco said conversationally, taking a step towards her. “Both about what you fought for and why you left Harry. It’s not the intentions that you care about, is it? Or the actions, that most other people pay attention to. It’s the  _power_ , and the fact that that power exists, that you want to destroy.”  
  
Granger stood still, as though she could sense the trap waiting for her beneath Draco’s words but not see it. “I don’t think all power should be destroyed,” she said at last. “Power can do great things, like give people  _freedom_ and a true  _future_.” She glared at Draco as if he would agree with her to get her glare out of his face. “That’s the kind I want to preserve. But you won’t give people that. Neither will Harry.”  
  
“Of all the people alive, you’re doubting  _him_?” Draco shook his head. “Your best friend? The one who already died to give people freedom and a future, as you put it?”  
  
“He’s growing more reckless lately,” Granger said, her hands entwining until Draco could see white spots standing out on the shiny red skin. “Your influence, probably. I don’t know what he might do.”  
  
Draco nodded, understanding something else. “And the uncertainty drives you mad,” he whispered to her, gently. “If you knew that he was evil, you wouldn’t feel so tormented. But you don’t know what he’ll do, what he’s capable of, and you can’t stand that. So you distance yourself from him and tell yourself it’s for the best.  
  
“If you were close, you could influence him, keep him on the Gryffindor path that you insist is the most moral. But you won’t trust him enough to do that, will you? Instead, you keep stepping back, because you don’t have an answer either to what he might do or the limits on his magic.”  
  
Draco edged towards her. “The limits on it are his will and his morals. You’re making both worse if you continue opposing him because of imaginary situations that might never happen. You erode his ability to trust other people. You make him think that there’s something wrong with him because he chooses to  _trust_ and  _love._ Simply because you disapprove of who he chose to do that with.” He smirked. “So if he turns against the wizarding world and starts corrupting people and taking their free will, we would have you to blame, more than anyone else.”  
  
With a small cry, Granger turned and fled from him. Draco waved his hand so that the people he could see starting forwards around the edges of the garden, security that he was paying for the occasion, would let her go. There was nothing to gain from delaying Granger here. Draco hoped that she would go away and listen to the poisoned memory of his words in her mind.   
  
That might be the best way to convince her that what she had done was, after all, ridiculous.  
  
Glad that he had been able to accomplish something for Harry’s sake even in the middle of his own campaign party, Draco turned back to his guests.  
  
*  
  
“Griphook?”  
  
Harry thought it was, but he wasn’t good at distinguishing one goblin from another. And he really hadn’t expected the goblins to come to Hogwarts. He had thought that they would summon him to Gringotts.  
  
If he got an answer to his letter, rewritten with Ron’s help, at all. It was possible that they would decide not to do anything except turn his letter over to the Ministry, or the letter would vanish into the muddle of all the documents they must have relating to human accounts, less important than the vast majority of them.  
  
Instead, Blackthorne had come flying to him with the news that several goblins were coming down the road from Hogsmeade, before they had reached the point where Harry’s wards would alert him that they were there. Now Hogwarts hummed beneath their feet, the stones of the entrance hall trembling a little. The school hadn’t decided if it liked them yet.  
  
Probably because Harry hadn’t decided if he trusted them yet. He folded his arms and regarded them skeptically, waiting.  
  
“You said that you were willing to give us the Sword of Gryffindor.” Griphook’s claws twitched, and then smoothed down again. His face was utterly inscrutable, and he looked as if he was sitting in on one of the meetings that Harry imagined were inevitable in running Gringotts. “Where is it?”  
  
“I’ll do it if you say that you’ll fulfill the terms I set out in my letter,” Harry retorted, and waved a hand, so that a stone pedestal rose from the rock right beside him. On top sat the Sword. Griphook continued to focus on Harry, but Harry thought it was an effort. The other five goblins with him stared at the Sword, trembling a little like hounds on the leash.  
  
“We will fulfill them,” Griphook said, and held up a stone shaped like a leaning triangle that flashed and glittered with shades of blue and white. “We are prepared to swear on this.”  
  
“What is it?” Blackthorne, Harry’s Knight, snapped behind him before Harry could speak.  
  
“A Stone of the Contract.” It was Briseis, standing at Harry’s right shoulder, who answered, her voice low and heavy to let Harry know this was important. “A vow sworn on it obliges the goblin, or wizard, who does it to keep their word. Otherwise, their magic is substantially weakened.”  
  
Harry nodded. He could understand how it showed the goblins were serious. They wouldn’t want to weaken the magic that guarded the bank, and he wouldn’t want to weaken the power that was his people’s main defense, either. “How do you swear on it?”  
  
“Blood,” said Griphook. He sounded satisfied, as Harry had anticipated, but his eyes were locked on the Sword anyway. He wanted it enough that he wasn’t taking pleasure in forcing Harry to swear a vow like this. It was just the instrument of how he would  _get_ what he wanted.  
  
“Like this?” Harry asked, and held out his hand. In moments, Persephone was on his shoulder, flicking out of a shadow suddenly enough to make the goblins in front of him jerk. Harry didn’t take pleasure in that, any more than Griphook did in the vow, but he had to admit that it was a lot harder for him than it probably was for Griphook.  
  
Persephone’s beak jabbed into his hand, locking on the thin web between his thumb and second finger, and for a second, she drank, sinking into and widening the wound. Then she lifted her head and shook it back and forth. The blood splattered on the Stone of the Contract, and the blue and white colors glowed and shifted like clouds and sky mingled.  
  
Then Persephone turned to face Griphook, and crouched a little. Griphook had already sliced his palm open with his own claws, though. Persephone sighed and flared her tail as Griphook smeared his blood on the stone.  
  
Harry half-bowed his head as he felt the vow settle around him, like chains. “You have the Sword of Gryffindor,” he said, his tongue thick. “And we have permission to have a pooled vault, with anyone who wants to having no trouble adding to it.”  
  
“We do,” said Griphook. “You do.” He reached up and gripped the Sword’s hilt. There was an expression of bliss on his face.  
  
Harry stepped back and bowed. He wondered for a moment if the vow would be broken if the Sword came back to Hogwarts to assist a Gryffindor in need.  
  
But he didn’t think so. He’d discussed the terms of the promise with Briseis beforehand, and she would have warned him if there was something different about the Stone of the Contract from the other methods of making the promise that she’d thought the goblins might use.  
  
In the meantime, Harry had a vault to clear out.


	8. Publish and Be Damned

“There’s someone in the fire for you, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy.”  
  
Draco stood at once. Rosenthal’s voice was smooth and light, but there was a heaviness to her brow, a hoodedness to her eyes, that alerted him that this was no ordinary firecall. Besides, he was with Rahad and a few other trusted allies. If Rosenthal had thought it ordinary, she would have announced the name.  
  
“If you will excuse me,” Draco said, and bowed from the waist, making sure to direct most of the bow towards Rahad, not as the senior Ministry official present in the room, but as the one he had promised the most to after his election and who had promised the most in return. “This may be important.”  
  
Rahad smiled and leaned back in the chair, saluting him a little with a glance that said she knew all about subordinates deciding that something was more important than it really was. Draco ducked his head in humility that he knew she knew was false, but it looked good, and then walked out of the sitting room to see what Rosenthal wanted.  
  
She waited for him in the corridor with her face gone pale. Draco cast a charm that would add color to her features in case they passed anyone else asking her for guidance; there were several parties of strangers wandering the Manor this morning, the lesser Ministry flunkies whom Rosenthal and a few of his less important advisers were entertaining.  
  
“Harry?” Draco asked. Harry, with bad news, was the only person he could think of who could have made Rosenthal look like that.  
  
Rosenthal shook her head. Draco was glad to see that her hands had stopped shaking and her face, while still unnaturally white even with the glamour charm, had gone from strained to composed. “Minister Tillipop,” she said.  
  
Draco stared at her. But he knew Rosenthal wouldn’t lie, and although she might be fooled by someone with a glamour claiming to be the Minister, Draco couldn’t see who would do that. Easy enough to check later if it was and they also managed to fool Draco himself. Tillipop wasn’t known for making his moves subtle or hard to detect.  
  
“Very well,” he said, and moved down the corridor in the direction of the sitting room that Rosenthal indicated. “Please give my excuses to Rahad and the others.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded, then closed her eyes, probably to help her summon up the right words in her mind. Draco didn’t envy her. He had the harder task, but Rosenthal was more badly shaken by the circumstance of the Minister firecalling him than Draco was.  
  
Draco  _did_ have to admit that along with the worry, he walked into the sitting room with curiosity burning up his chest. What could Tillipop have to say to him, through this relatively private and discreet form of communication? He was the type to announce his moves at the top of his lungs, especially if he thought there was every chance of them working. And he wasn’t smart enough to figure out what  _didn’t_ work.  
  
“Ministerial Candidate Malfoy?”  
  
The words were expertly pronounced, which eliminated drunkenness and most glamours. It was hard to cast an auditory glamour that would fool someone who knew the Minister’s voice well, as Draco did. Draco didn’t discount Polyjuice yet, though. He shut the door of the sitting room behind him and nodded to the face floating in the fire. “Tillipop,” he said, not seeing the need to use a title of respect that would be removed from the man soon enough. “You had something you wished to say to me?”  
  
Tillipop licked his lips. Draco inched the chance of this being the man himself higher on his mental probability scale. Polyjuice gave you the voice and the looks, but not innate mastery over the habits and gestures of the person you were imitating.  
  
“We both know that we need to stop playing games,” Tillipop said.  
  
Draco sat down in front of the fireplace, in a chair he had placed the proper distance away to communicate but not get ashes on himself, and crossed his legs as he smiled at Tillipop. “But all of politics is a game,” he said. “If you wish to remove yourself from the board, of course, you have only to say so. Announce your retirement instead of your running in the election.”  
  
Tillipop clenched his jaw hard enough that Draco heard a popping sound. Then he took a deep breath, and gave Draco a smile that could have been mistaken as indulgent by someone stupider than Draco. “We both know that I hold the winning hand.”  
  
“I wasn’t aware that this was cards,” Draco said softly.   
  
Tillipop looked now as if he wished that he would have had someone else handle this firecall instead. But he shook his head and moved forwards into the threats that Draco had already been expecting. “ _Mr._ Malfoy. You know that we have damaging evidence of the connection you have with Dark Lord Potter, and that we can publish that damaging evidence.”  
  
Draco didn’t move, didn’t start, didn’t flinch. There was always the possibility that someone else would have betrayed him—maybe Blaise, whose mother had been punished by Harry—or that someone would have put two and two together and claimed to have decisive evidence. “You caught me,” he said.  
  
Tillipop gaped at him.  
  
“I did indeed donate some money to Hogwarts.” Draco cast his eyes down and sighed sadly. “And invited him to dine with my parents. I was afraid that my dirty secrets must come out at last.”  
  
“ _Mr_. Malfoy!” From the sound of it, something expensive had broken in the room behind Tillipop. Draco hoped it was because someone else with him was staggering about with laughter. “You know what I mean. Your friendship, and his funding of your campaign.”  
  
 _Stop. Wait._ Draco wanted to laugh aloud, but he maintained his mask without much difficulty. He had been through harder attempts to crack his mask when it came to his father. Admittedly, he hadn’t been through many trials as  _hilarious_ as this.  _They’ve got hold of the stick by the wrong end, haven’t they?_  
  
Draco leaned further back in the chair, and blinked. “What about his funding of my campaign?”  
  
Tillipop laughed, the kind of laugh that said he was master of the situation and everyone else would have to bow down to him.  _The poor fool,_ Draco thought.  _The only reason he became Minister at all was to be a useful puppet to some people, and now that he’s not useful anymore, he’s been abandoned to his fate._ “We know that he was at Gringotts yesterday, rearranging his vaults. What does that mean but that he was taking some money out to give to your campaign?”  
  
“You could contact him and ask him, of course,” Draco said. “I don’t think he’s lied yet about his intentions.”  
  
Tillipop sneered at him. “I’m asking  _you_.”  
  
Draco dipped his head. He would have to send a letter to Harry, of course, partially because he thought he knew what Harry was doing at Gringotts but he didn’t  _know_ , and partially to make sure that this tactic wouldn’t backfire. But the chance to ask the question and bait the Minister into a trap was too rich to be resisted. “I’m so  _honored_ that you’re asking me, Minister, but honestly, I’m not sure that I can help you. Maybe it would be better if you published the information and we could see what light the general public could throw on the situation.”  
  
“This is  _blackmail_ , you fool,” said Tillipop, unexpectedly loud. “Do you  _realize_ that?”  
  
 _And that Pensieve memory, Minister, just cost you the campaign._ But Draco kept himself leaning back in the chair, and just shook his head a little. “You’ve published many things already that hurt the Dark Lord Potter worse, and still he’s limited his retaliation against you. Do you want to publish this? Go ahead.”  
  
Tillipop did some more staring. Draco looked back at him.  _Of course he doesn’t understand what I’m playing at. He was never a professional politician, but he’s facing one._ Training at Lucius Malfoy’s knee was excellent preparation for a life in politics.  
  
Finally, Tillipop said, “You’ll be sorry that you didn’t accede to my request.”  
  
Draco smiled. “Was that a threat? Or did you already make the threat?”  
  
There was an inrush of flame, and Tillipop vanished from his hearth. Draco leaned forwards and pressed his fingers to his forehead, taking a minute to revise his actions and make sure that he hadn’t done something that could get him in trouble.  
  
But no, he was pretty sure he hadn’t. The Minister would publish this, and the goblins of Gringotts would explain what had  _really_ happened—the goblins had no reason not to—and Tillipop would look even stupider.  
  
Of course, the success of that strategy depended on Draco going and spending some time with Harry to warn him about the impending article.   
  
Draco grinned.  _Luckily, that’s no trouble at all._  
  
*  
  
Harry smiled, but kept his eyes on his notes for now. The ripple of joy that had run through Hogwarts, the shutters flying open in empty rooms and then closing again, the suddenly straining branches of the trees, the breath of health and happiness in musty corridors, told him well enough who had come through the fire. But for now, he would let Draco have his little surprise.  
  
Hands wrapped around his eyes, and Draco’s voice murmured, “Guess who?”  
  
“My secret boyfriend?” Harry responded promptly. “Careful, you want to hurry out of here before you run into my other lover, the one who’s running for Minister.”  
  
Draco snorted and spun his chair around. Harry went with it, glad for once that Briseis had insisted on casting spells on the chair that would allow it to turn easily. Harry could have done that with his own magic, but it eased her boredom in this pause between major actions, and a bored Slytherin was a dangerous one.  
  
He was forcibly reminded of that when Draco climbed into his lap and whispered, “Are you busy, or can you spare some time for your  _first_ secret boyfriend?”  
  
“For you? Always.” Harry slid his hands up Draco’s neck and into his hair, kissing him. He felt his magic slide and brighten, and there was a disgusted flapping of wings outside his window that told him Persephone was flying away. She had taken to bringing small animals in from the Forbidden Forest lately and artistically arranging their corpses on his pillow, but she would have to go off and eat the latest one by herself.  
  
“Wow,” Draco said, sounding simply and happily dazed, as he surfaced from the latest kiss, blinking.  
  
“Did you come here to make love, or for something more serious?” Harry turned towards the bed, which hopped up on sudden, new toes and jolted towards them, anxious to be of service.   
  
“Something more serious, unfortunately.” Draco tightened a hand in Harry’s hair and sighed. “Tillipop found out that you did some sort of rearrangement of vaults at Gringotts. He contacted me threatening to publish the information that you’d been funding my campaign.” He cocked an eyebrow at Harry. “As though he knew the exact size of the Malfoy vaults. Fool. I told him to publish and be damned. Was I right?”  
  
The undercurrent of anxiety in Draco’s voice made Harry smile. He kissed Draco again, hard enough to make him wriggle, and murmured into his ear, “You did exactly right. We’ll make Tillipop  _squirm_.”  
  
“Not in the same way as me, hopefully,” Draco said, and widened his legs over Harry’s lap.  
  
“Never in the same way,” Harry promised, and slid his hand down to Draco’s groin. “I only want you. Along with, you know, my people safe and possible eventual world domination—no, wait, that’s my evil twin in the  _Daily Prophet._ I want the first two things. And the second is all right for now, so…” And he kissed Draco again.  
  
Giving himself to Harry’s strokes, his eyes rolling back in his head and his body falling gracefully into the rhythm, made Draco one of the most beautiful things Harry had ever seen. Watching the expressions flit and change across his face meant more than watching the sunrise. There was nothing dark about him, in any sense, only simple surrender, simple pleasure.  
  
Out in the Forest, he knew, Persephone was probably vomiting from the sweetness. Or relieving her feelings by tearing something small and crunchy to bits.  
  
Harry snickered, and stroked faster.  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t believe the soaring feelings in his own chest. He had thought he had enjoyed flying when he was sitting on his broom, but it was nothing compared to this, to the sheer abundance of  _delight_.  
  
He hadn’t felt it that much, he thought woozily, as he wobbled back and forth on Harry’s lap and Harry steadied him with an arm across his back, then continued moving his hand in the  _best_ way. His father had always said there was contentment and glee in politics, but no happiness. That had been in the nature of a warning when Draco announced that he intended to pursue a career as Minister. Lucius seemed concerned that happiness was something that Draco would miss.  
  
Maybe it would have been. But now…  
  
 _Harry_ , Draco thought, his head bowing forwards until his brow touched Harry’s shoulder, and his hair rustled in a rhythm that told him just how hard and fast and  _well_  Harry was stroking him. Harry kissed him and murmured into his ear, and it didn’t matter that the words weren’t audible.  
  
 _Harry,_ Draco thought again, and came.  
  
Harry hissed in satisfaction, a literal hiss, and raised his hand to his mouth. Draco stared at him in surprise. He hadn’t even realized that Harry had unbuttoned his robes, and so Draco had exploded over Harry’s fingers instead of inside cloth.  
  
Harry held his eyes. Draco stared back, feeling like a bird before a snake. Well, that was appropriate, given that Harry could speak Parseltongue.  
  
But in this case, it seemed that Harry had only wanted to make sure that Draco was watching, not to hypnotize him. Because he stuck out his tongue and swept it down his fingers in a long, impressive lick, humming under his breath.  
  
Draco shuddered all over. If it wasn’t that he felt utterly spent, he was sure he could have gone again. Instead, he managed to reach behind himself, or under, and then shift forwards again when he realized exactly where in Harry’s lap he was. Harry smiled and rolled his hips, offering himself up to Draco’s fumbling grip as if he couldn’t imagine anything better.  
  
It seemed the enchantment that had guided Draco’s steps so far this day, though, letting him make the right decision with Tillipop and enjoy this interlude with Harry, had come to an end, because the door to the office opened.  
  
Draco scrambled, but Harry held him still, and turned to face the door with a calm gaze. Draco cleared his throat and reminded himself that Hogwarts would have told Harry who was coming long before they arrived. He did try to make sure that his cock was out of sight, though.  
  
Especially when he saw that Granger, pale and nervous, was the one who stood in the doorway. At least her gaping at him and Harry made a change from her nervousness, which Draco would have found tiresome to deal with.  
  
“Harry,” Granger whispered. “I thought—I thought I’d try and see if you still had an exception for me in the wards, and now…” She trailed off. Draco decided she was trying to look at the ceiling and away from them to spare them all some embarrassment, but she also didn’t want to remove her eyes from her best friend’s face.  
  
“There’s always an exception for you,” Harry said, and his eyes were wise and his smile infectious. He put out a hand to Granger, and she blinked at him and muttered something about having to send a letter instead.  
  
Draco could sense how precarious the balance in the room was. His words might have made Granger consider better, but she had probably come here without a plan, except testing the wards the way she had talked about. She hadn’t come here to  _talk_ to Harry, but she hadn’t come here not to talk to him, either. She could flee any second if she decided that the fortunes of the moment were against her, and she might not come back.  
  
 _Just like a Gryffindor,_ Draco thought.  _Jump right in, because lack of a plan can’t_ possibly  _hurt them, right?_  
  
Granger shut her eyes and swallowed. Then she opened her eyes again, and whispered, “H-Harry?”  
  
“I still need you,” Harry said, his voice deep, his eyes never moving from her face. “I still would welcome you back. But we need to have a good long  _talk_ about what we both believe, and maybe make each other some promises.”  
  
Granger’s face looked on the verge of crumbling. Draco quickly and quietly picked up his wand. He knew what was best. He would Apparate himself home, which he could easily do through the exceptions in the wards that Harry had built in for him. Someone like Granger could walk into the school without tripping the guards; Draco was the only one other than Harry and Weasley who could Apparate in and out of the office.  
  
But Harry caught his hand without seeming to look at him, and said, “Let Draco and me get into a less compromising position, and then we can  _talk,_  Hermione.”  
  
Granger nodded, her eyes squinting as though she was trying to keep back sunlight—or tears. Harry turned to Draco and smiled at him.  
  
“Your choice,” he said. “Stay or go. I just didn’t want you to feel as though you had to leave.”  
  
“All things considered,” Draco said carefully, “it might be best.”  
  
That won him the smile that was Harry’s alone, and Harry leaned up to kiss him delicately on the cheek. “Goodbye,” he whispered. “Remember you owe me one.”  
  
“The kind of debt I enjoy owing, and the only one I do,” Draco said, for Granger’s benefit, and carefully stood up and prepared himself and his clothes before he Apparated away, the last thing he felt under his hand the touch of his lord and lover’s shoulder.


	9. A Good, Long Talk

[](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9728320/9/)  
“I had no idea that you had gone that far with him.”  
  
Despite his nervousness that Hermione had come back and about what she might say, and the tension that thrummed through his body from his still-erect cock, Harry found himself laughing aloud. “You sound like—I don’t know, my mum or something,” he said, lounging back in his chair and dragging another over with a motion of his hand so Hermione could sit down. “No sex on the first date, right?”  
  
“I  _hope_ that wasn’t your first date.” Hermione roasted him with a glare as she grabbed the chair and twisted it into the right position. Harry’s magic would have done that for her if she had waited, but he appreciated her being impatient; it meant that he was doing  _something_ right.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “Long past it.” He looked straight into her eyes. “I hope that you aren’t going to tell me that I shouldn’t be sleeping with him.”  
  
Hermione gasped a little, and then clapped a hand back across her face and shook it. “No,” she whispered. “I actually went to him because I thought that he was probably getting some kind of influence on his actions from you.”  
  
Harry laughed again, in spite of the painful pressure in his belly and abdomen. “I fell fast in your eyes, didn’t I?” he asked. “I declare myself a Dark Lord, and a month later, I’m influencing the Ministerial election and manipulating one of the candidates into bed.”  
  
Hermione looked as though her face was on fire. “Not—not exactly that. But I did think that you might be persuading him to put some policies into place that would favor you and Hogwarts when he became Minister.”  
  
Harry sighed and kicked up his heels, resting his feet on the desk. He had already used a cold jolt to his groin so that he wouldn’t embarrass himself when he did that. “I don’t think there’s any way Draco can afford to favor me openly. Of course he’ll try to come to an armed peace between my court and the Ministry. He thinks Tillipop handed this stupidly, and he would have thought that if he’d never become my lover. And he’ll say that Hogwarts can reopen with some Ministry oversight. Trying to close it was also stupid.”  
  
“But doesn’t he have to worry more about the way he’ll handle you?” Hermione seemed to have picked through all the many, many things she could respond to in that speech and chosen the one that was least dangerous to them both.  
  
Harry folded his arms and gave her an amused look. “Why should he? We can’t bring our relationship into the open, and we know that. It would scare too many people. He can’t kneel at my feet, and I can’t cower at his. But he knows that the Ministry  _can’t_ exactly handle a Dark Lord like me. He’ll treat me the way Fudge and the other Ministers treated Dumbledore: as a power unto myself. When he has to consult with me, then he’ll do that. But it’s not going to be the attempts to crush me that Tillipop pulled.”  
  
“He can’t allow a little independent nation to just flourish inside Britain’s borders.” Hermione looked around as though Draco was still in the room and she could give him a political lecture. “It can’t happen. He would lose all respect.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “After years of Tillipop, it would take different kinds of things to make people lose respect for the Minister. They’re just going to be glad that they can actually trust someone to do what he says he will.’  
  
“So he’s already planning on how not to be a  _real_ Minister,” Hermione whispered.  
  
“What does that even  _mean_?” Harry asked. It seemed to him that Hermione was thinking some really strange things, if she thought that he would sink so low as to use some kind of magical compulsion on Draco, and also that Draco should follow political standards she hadn’t articulated—even though she was also unsurprised that he didn’t. “What would a real Minister do, to you?”  
  
“All things that we’ve ever discussed Ministers should do,” Hermione said, with a flash of passion in her voice that she glanced away a minute later as though trying to hide. “All—all the  _good_ things. Give house-elves rights. Fight for the rights of other magical creatures. Treat wizards equally.”  
  
“All right,” Harry said quietly, “but this doesn’t have anything to do with house-elves or magical beings.” He would tell her about his truces with the goblins and the centaurs and merfolk in a bit, but he wanted her to concentrate on this first. “So what kind of Minister should he be?”  
  
“Fight injustice,” Hermione said, and clenched her fist, scowling at him. “Stand above party politics. Not surrender to special interests. Give the people what they need and want.”  
  
“Then he would never get elected,” Harry pointed out quietly.  
  
“Of course he would!” Hermione leaned nearer, so far that Harry thought she would fall over. “If he made the promises and people thought he meant them—”  
  
“With his last name?” Harry shook his head. “How long would he have to work to ensure they did? And if the Ministry hierarchy believed that he would really do all that, they would block him.” Hermione looked as if she was going to object, but Harry said gently, “How many changes in the laws about house-elves have you managed to enact, even after you worked full-time for three years?”  
  
“Three years isn’t long,” Hermione muttered, and flushed.  
  
Harry nodded a little. He knew the expression on her face. She knew he was right, and just didn’t want to admit it. “He would either never get elected, or he wouldn’t get anything done, or he wouldn’t make many strides. He prefers to get elected and then see what changes he can make, by sliding them under the surface of business as usual.”  
  
“Will he really make changes that could help house-elves?” Hermione’s eyes were big and hopeful.  
  
Harry chuckled. “Do you want me to use my influence on him or not? Make up your mind.”  
  
Hermione flushed dully. “That’s not—what I meant,” she said with difficulty, and stood up. Harry watched as she paced back and forth, surprised only that she hadn’t started doing it before now. “I think it would be a great idea if he worked more for house-elves. And if he knew that it would make you happy, he might. That’s not the kind of influence I feared you would use. You wouldn’t be taking away his free will, you would just be asking him for a gift the way that any lover might ask another.”  
  
“This has been bothering me,” Harry remarked, and turned to face her. “What made you think that I would take away his free will?”  
  
Hermione halted, looking blindly out the enchanted window that Hogwarts had put in the wall for him. Harry rubbed his fingers together idly, waiting. The image out the window at the moment was the Forbidden Forest, and he didn’t think it was that enthralling, but he was willing to wait to give her time to speak.  
  
“Because you don’t have any limits to your power.” Hermione’s words were breathy, but Harry was in the center of his power in that office. The stones and airs of Hogwarts would make sure that he heard all the words she spoke, as long as they were here. “No  _effective_ ones. None that anyone else could enforce.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Neither does a volcano.”  
  
Hermione turned around and glared at him. “But a volcano doesn’t  _decide_ to erupt. It either happens or it doesn’t.”  
  
“I have the limits of my own free will and my judgment,” Harry said quietly. “I suppose that I could lose control of them someday. I could also definitely make a decision that I thought was right and have it turn out wrong. But you ought to find me trustworthy than a volcano, because I won’t randomly lash out at my enemies. I’ll attack people who attack me, or who attack Hogwarts. And if someone chooses to come and live in my court, or asks for my protection, or takes a risk for me and has the Ministry or someone else try to threaten or blackmail them in return, then I’ll protect them.”  
  
“There’s that word again,” Hermione said, and Harry shook his head. It was hard to tell whether she’d changed tactics or was talking about the same thing when he didn’t know  _what_ she was talking about.  
  
“What do you mean? Which one?”  
  
“ _Court_.” Hermione spat the word as though it hurt her, and then folded her arms and twisted away. “Doesn’t it hurt you, that you’re setting up something that sounds like an emperor or a Lord rules from?”  
  
“I am a Dark Lord,” Harry said mildly. “And I thought it could also sound like something justice is dispensed from.”  
  
Hermione shuddered without looking at him. “You’re taking this whole notion of an independent little nation too far.”  
  
“That was the way Dumbledore ran Hogwarts, too. And he had to, since no one believed him about Voldemort or would take on the responsibility of protecting the school.” Harry stood up and put one hand on Hermione’s shoulder. “Hermione. Think about it. How different am I from Dumbledore, aside from the name? People respected him because he was a powerful wizard and he’d defeated Grindelwald. That was the only reason he was allowed to get away with as much as he did—not because he was a great Transfiguration professor or because he’d proven he was a great politician.”  
  
“He  _was_ a politician.” Hermione’s shoulder twitched beneath his hand, but she didn’t turn around.   
  
“But not one that most people could understand, not with that daft act he liked to put on.” Harry walked around Hermione so that she could see him. “Dumbledore lived by his own law. I’m trying to do the same thing. His ways are different than mine, though. There are people who think that I’m mad, I’m sure, but I’m not going to pretend that I am, the way Dumbledore had to. I’ll do what I have to. I’ll keep doing it. I already told you about the limits. What makes it so hard for you to trust me?”  
  
“The damn title. The bloody  _trappings._ ” Hermione turned and gave him a withering look that, Harry had to admit, he didn’t expect. He blinked at her. “The knights and the advisers and all the rest of it? Really? If you were just the Headmaster of Hogwarts, you wouldn’t have all those trappings.”  
  
“I declared myself Dark Lord before I’d thought the whole plan through—”  
  
“ _Really_?”  
  
When she was in the right mood, Harry thought, Hermione could do sarcasm better than Draco. “But now that I have, I have to live with the decisions. That’s what this has been all about. I thought you knew, Hermione. I thought you agreed with me before you decided that you didn’t and fled.”  
  
“I didn’t flee.” Hermione raised her head, and her mouth was like a slash cut into her face. “I went away to think about things for a little while.”  
  
“What conclusion have you come to now?” Harry asked her. “Why come back to Hogwarts if you still distrust and dislike me?”  
  
Hermione broke away from him to pace slowly back and forth. Harry followed her with his eyes, biting his lip when he would have broken and asked her to talk to him. If Hermione was still coming to a decision, the last thing Harry wanted to do was press her.  
  
He wondered if she knew how hard his heart was beating, and if she would spare some sympathy for him if she did.   
  
She finally turned around and said, “I know that you haven’t taken away anyone’s free will yet. And now that I think about it, it seems a little silly to imagine that you’re influencing Malfoy more than he could influence you. He’s the one who decided to run for Minister before you declared yourself Dark Lord of Hogwarts and he’s the one who has the political instincts. But like you said, there’s nothing that can stop you except yourself. So I thought he was a victim.”  
  
“What about Ron?” Harry asked quietly. “The other people who swore to me?”  
  
“Some of them just might have been impressed by your power. Or they might have personal ambitions.” Hermione made a face, and Harry knew that she was thinking about Briseis. “Ron…I don’t know. We disagreed about it. He kept writing letters to me. Some of them were funny and counted down all the days since you declared yourself Dark Lord and hadn’t done anything that reminded him of Voldemort. Some of them were serious. We argued a lot.” She closed her eyes. “If I could have some guarantee that you hadn’t changed…”  
  
“I don’t know what guarantee I can give you, except the one you already have,” Harry said quietly. “I let you come back, and I let you argue with me, and I’ll never punish you for it. But I also have to tell you that if you stay here and work against me, I’ll ask you to leave. And I won’t automatically stop doing something you disapprove of. I’ll listen to you explain, but your approval isn’t the only standard I have now.”  
  
Hermione flinched a little. “What is the standard?” she demanded, more harshly than Harry thought she knew. “Malfoy’s approval?”  
  
Harry’s lip quirked. “No. I think he would approve of just taking over the wizarding world and getting rid of Tillipop, personally. He honors power, and he doesn’t see why I can’t just take over.”  
  
Hermione nodded, tensely, her eyes never leaving him. Harry decided this wasn’t the time to try a sense of humor, and sighed. He didn’t look away, though. He didn’t want to risk any chance that she would decide he wasn’t being honest.  
  
“My instinct,” he said. “Persephone’s approval—if she hates something, I do it. Ron’s advice. Briseis’s. What I think will be good for the court. I made a truce with the goblins and gave them the Sword of Gryffindor because I thought protecting funds for my court was more important than the Sword. I gave the centaurs my protection because they’re right next to Hogwarts and I thought they could be important allies.”  
  
Hermione’s whole face changed. “You made alliances with magical creatures and you didn’t  _tell me_?”  
  
Harry sighed. “I thought that talking about it first would be an attempt to manipulate you. Or at least that you might see it that way.”  
  
Hermione turned away and walked to the far side of his office, standing with arms braced against the wall. Harry thought he knew why. If she still distrusted him, she had to choose to stay with someone who was making the alliances with magical creatures she had always wanted the Ministry to make, or admit that she might have made a mistake by coming back and walk away again, turning her back on those alliances.  
  
Harry didn’t speak. He thought he understood her position now, but if she could approve of his power when he was doing things she liked, then he  _did_ think it was a bit hypocritical. He would listen to her advice, but he wouldn’t turn Hogwarts back over to the Ministry, and he wouldn’t abandon the people he had promised could live under his protection, and he couldn’t give Draco up. He folded his arms and waited for her to decide.  
  
Something pecked at the window. Harry used Hogwarts’s magic to twitch the shutters open, and Persephone soared inside and settled on his shoulder. Harry waited for her to claw him up, but she remained still. When he glanced at her, he saw that she was focused on Hermione, her neck stretched forwards as if that would make Hermione look or taste better.  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows in response, but Persephone didn’t pull her neck back in or start acting like her normal self. She kept weighing, watching.  
  
 _Deciding if Hermione causes me more misery by staying or going,_ Harry finally decided, shaking his head. Persephone was probably going to irritate him with things like that for the rest of their lives together.  
  
Hermione finally took a deep breath and turned around. “I want you to promise me something,” she said.  
  
Harry nodded. He could do that. “As long as you tell me what it is,” he said, an answer both to Hermione and to his own conscience.  
  
“Yes,” Hermione said, and then nodded as though that reassurance wasn’t enough for either him or her; Harry didn’t know which. “I want you to promise me that you’ll tell me if you feel yourself going Dark. Consult me about every major decision you make.”  
  
“I’ll do that,” Harry said, “unless I’m in the middle of a situation where I have to decide  _now_ , like battle. Or if it’s about Draco.”  
  
Hermione sighed, but her eyes were happy and her hand trembling a little as she reached out to him. Harry clasped it and pulled her back towards him, searching her face with his own eyes. Could they relax now? Were they back to normal?   
  
“I know now that Malfoy isn’t a helpless victim,” Hermione whispered to him. “And I’ve seen Ron, and he isn’t either. Sitting around and debating with myself has never been my style, either, but it’s all I’ve been doing for the last few weeks.” She glanced warily at Persephone, but continued. “I’ll stay here and do what I can to make things right.”  
  
Not necessarily between them, Harry knew. She would try to do the right thing regardless of it maybe getting him angry. But that she would do that implied she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He grinned and hugged her.  
  
On his shoulder, Persephone dug her claws in, and blood welled to stain his robes, which meant she had decided Hermione was more of a blessing than a curse. Harry just grinned the wider.


	10. Exposure

“So he’s moved at last.”  
  
Briseis spread the paper out on Harry’s desk in front of him with a smile so grim that Harry expected to see much worse news than he did when he picked it up. But the only thing that could have made her look like that was the picture of Minister Tillipop in front of Gringotts, holding up a sign that contained a list of numbers. Harry snorted. You couldn’t read the numbers even from this short distance, which meant that most of the public would have no idea what they said and would have to take it on faith that they meant what Tillipop claimed they did.  
  
Apparently, what he claimed they said, Harry saw from skimming the story, was that Harry had been funding Draco’s campaign. Or bribing Ministry officials. Both accusations showed up and tangled around each other like baby snakes. Harry shook his head and put the paper down again.  
  
“What are we going to  _do_ about it?” Briseis demanded, her hands on her hips.  
  
Harry glanced at her in surprise. “Wait for Tillipop to embarrass himself again, which he surely will before too much longer. What’s wrong?” Briseis was rocking on her feet the way she did when she couldn’t wait to take an opponent on.  
  
“He’s saying things about you that aren’t true,” Briseis muttered. “Spreading rumors again. Last time, we countered with the truth. Why aren’t we doing that right now?” She planted her hand on the photograph, making the pictured Tillipop glare at her and stop rattling his paper, and leveled Harry with a much more impressive glare.  
  
“Because his accusations are ridiculous.” Harry reached out and gently lifted her hand off the picture. The strength of his magic sometimes made objects do unanticipated things around him, and he didn’t want to find out that Tillipop had suddenly gained the strength to bite her palm or do something similar. “And because we have much more damaging proof than he could ever come up with.”  
  
“When are we going to release it?” Briseis paced back and forth in front of him like a tiger with a cage that was too small.  
  
Harry glanced out the window. Persephone had gone to set fire to a pile of grass in the grounds that he had built her because it was less damaging than thwarting her. Good. If she wasn’t here, he wouldn’t have to contend with the uneasiness that she sometimes inspired in Briseis, and could focus on this unusual thing in front of him.  
  
He held out his hand and conjured a spinning globe of white and blue light. Briseis stopped and turned, face softening when she saw his magic, the way it usually did when she encountered any of his tricks. Harry smiled and lofted the globe to the top of his door, where it would stick and prevent anyone from coming in unexpectedly, even someone like Ron or Hermione who had passage through his wards most of the time.  
  
“Why are you so unsettled about this?” Harry asked. “You know that Tillipop admitted to Mr. Malfoy that he had blackmail material. All we have to do is release that Pensieve memory, and he’s gone as far as the Ministerial campaign is concerned. What is there in that to inspire uneasiness?”  
  
Briseis closed her eyes and twisted a piece of hair around her finger, a nervous gesture that Harry never remembered seeing before. “You’ll laugh if I tell you.”  
  
“I’m a Dark Lord ruling Hogwarts and bound in a relationship with a black phoenix that I still don’t understand.” Harry waved his hand. “I’m the one who has to wake up each morning and ask myself if I’m living a dream or a joke. Please, tell me what troubles you.”  
  
Briseis nodded and opened her eyes. “I’m not a Seer myself, but a few members of my family have been. And some of the others of us have had—a sense of trouble coming. One of my grandfathers felt trouble so strongly one day when they’d returned from a holiday that he wouldn’t let my grandmother and my father go into their house. And it turned out that a blood feud enemy had used their holiday to burrow through their wards, and was hiding inside the house, waiting for them to come inside unprepared so he could kill them. He was taken by the Aurors instead.” She issued a deep breath, the hiss of a teakettle. “I had one feeling like that when I was a child, and didn’t fly up into a storm that blew up suddenly and probably would have killed me.”  
  
“You have it now,” Harry summarized. “Can you tell whether it’s focused on you or me or something else?”  
  
“No.” Briseis opened one helpless hand. “I would feel a lot better if I  _could_. Then at least I would know for sure what direction this is coming from. But I started feeling it this morning when I saw Minister Tillipop’s photograph, and I haven’t been able to get rid of it since.”  
  
“Hmmm,” murmured Harry thoughtfully.  
  
There was a quick bang against the window, the kind that said the next blow would splinter the glass. Harry waved his hand and dissolved the glass just as Persephone dived at it again. She sailed inside on broad wings as if she had meant to do that all along, and settled on his shoulder. Harry stroked her talons and ignored the way they pinched. Now that he had got out of Briseis what was bothering her, he thought it was all right for Persephone to be in the room.  
  
“Can you focus it at all?” Harry asked finally. “If I asked you about it, about specific things or events or people, could you narrow it down by the way you reacted to each mention of them?”  
  
Briseis blinked. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever tried to test it that way.” She leaned back against the wall, arms folded, and ignored Persephone as thoroughly as Persephone was currently ignoring her. “It has to be worth a try.” She nodded at Harry to go ahead, and Harry reached out and laid his hand next to the photograph of Tillipop.  
  
“When you think of Minister Tillipop,” he asked, “does the feeling become clearer? Sharper? Stronger? Is there something that makes you think that he’ll manage to get in a good strike after all, even though he hasn’t managed so far?”  
  
He paused, because Briseis was shaking her head hard enough to make Persephone hiss. But Persephone hissed at everything and anything, so Harry ignored that. “All right. What about me? Is it something I’m going to do? Have done?”  
  
Briseis hesitated and held out one hand, which swung back and forth like the pointing minute hand Harry had sometimes seen on Muggle watches. “It’s connected to you, but not something you’re going to do,” she murmured. Then she opened her eyes and concentrated on Harry. “Which is useless, since everyone alive in the wizarding world at the moment is influenced by you in some way or another.”  
  
Harry had to smile. “I hardly think the babies are. And I hope my students have better things to think of than what I’m going to do next.”  
  
Briseis sniffed and shut her eyes again, not looking convinced, and Persephone shifted as if she wanted to bite his ear but also didn’t want to agree with Briseis. Harry ignored her again. “All right. So let’s think of the people connected to me one by one. Ron? Hermione?”  
  
“I would have felt it before now, if it was one of them.” Briseis opened her eyes a second time, and there was a dull glitter in the back of them now. “They’re conceited and they don’t know politics as well as they think they do.”  
  
Harry made little patting motions on the air. He’d suspected that it was only a matter of time before Briseis had a dispute with his friends. They were Gryffindors still in a lot of the ways they did things and thought about things, and she was a Slytherin. Besides, she and Hermione were too alike for comfort. “Agreed about the politics part,” he said mildly. “But what about Draco?”  
  
Briseis waited for a long time, her head cocked, and Harry swallowed against the lump forming in his throat. Well, Briseis had said herself that her feelings were rarely that strong or specific. If it was about Draco, then Harry had to at least consider the possibility.  
  
And it could be something that would befall Draco, rather than him betraying Harry—which Harry could admit, at least to himself, would be his worst nightmare.  
  
“No,” Briseis said at last. “I’d have to be close to him to completely eliminate him. Or that adviser of his.” There was grudging admiration in her voice. She didn’t dislike Rosenthal, Harry thought, but once again, they were very similar, and Briseis didn’t entirely approve of the way Rosenthal did her job as Draco’s adviser. “But I think that it’s more likely to come from someone else. Maybe from his  _direction,_ though. That Blaise Zabini he keeps close to him. I didn’t like the look of him.” She eyed Harry. “And there was some talk about him blaming you for his mother’s actions. Wasn’t there?”  
  
Harry kept his face bland. Draco was the only one who knew in detail how Harry had punished Blaise’s mother for publishing photographs of his abusive childhood. “Something like that.” He waited, but Briseis finally shrugged and shook her head. Harry nodded back, unsurprised. “Well, keep thinking about that, and when you think that you have a more definite fix on what’s troubling you, then please let me know. I would rather have to think about a dozen different threats in detail than be blindsided by one.”  
  
“Speaking of being blindsided…”  
  
Harry groaned a little. “You have a sheaf of parchment in your hand,” he said, tragically. Persephone brushed a feather against his ear. She didn’t seem good at distinguishing between when he was pretending to be upset and when he actually was, which meant that she didn’t know when she should rejoice in his discomfort and when she should depress his humor. “That means another meeting, doesn’t it? Or another delegation?”  
  
“Right the second time.” Briseis tossed the parchment onto his desk and made washing motions with her hands for a moment. “But I believe that you’ll want to think more about this one than you did about offering friendship to the goblins or the centaurs or the merfolk.”  
  
Harry studied her. She kept her face bland, but she also turned away. Persephone gave a soft chirrup and dropped to the desk, considering the edge of the parchment as though she knew how to read.  
  
“You’ll have to take lessons if you want to know what the words mean,” Harry told her, and neatly dodged the latest attempt to take his finger off. Then he picked up the parchment and began to read.  
  
A second later, he raised his eyes to Briseis’s face. She’d been peeking to see how he would take it, but she hastily turned away and pretended to be busy with the applications for people to live under the rule of his court. Harry was revising them carefully, since he didn’t want Ministry informants or criminals who would hurt his people sneaking in under the general welcome.  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this group before,” Harry said, keeping his voice mild, and rustled the paper. “The Independent and Most Noble and Ancient Order of Werewolves?”  
  
“I think the ‘Ancient’ part may be a misnomer.” Briseis kept her face calm and unconcerned. “I understand why they put it in there. It adds dignity. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a misnomer.”  
  
“Right,” Harry said, and put the parchment down, and stared at it some more.  
  
“If you’re concerned that the werewolves might not be qualified to contact you, I do recognize the names,” Briseis said, tapping the names on the first sheet of parchment. “They’re pure-bloods of high social standing. I didn’t—I don’t think  _anyone_ knew they were werewolves or connected to them, but they are real people. And not the kind where someone would run around using their names for fun, either.”  
  
Harry looked back at the names. Hubert Ombershade and Faustine Greenbush. He couldn’t say that he’d heard of either of them before, although from her name Faustine was probably related to the Greengrass family. He rapped his fingers against the sheet, and then considered Briseis again.  
  
“Shall I tell you all the trouble this is going to cause?” Harry asked, while Briseis stared innocently at the ceiling.  
  
“You can,” said Briseis, and grinned at him suddenly. “It would be a good proof that you  _listen_ to my lessons on culture and politics from time to time, instead of keeping me around to recite them for you.”  
  
Harry snorted, but didn’t comment. “The werewolves are technically still people most of the time, and subject to Ministry law for wizards,” he said, numbering the points on his fingers. Persephone arched her neck and looked at them with interest. Harry removed his hand from the table. “Except that they’re also treated as mindless magical creatures during the full moon. The Ministry makes them register, and treats them as capable of murder, but also speaks about them as poor victims and promises Wolfsbane to them on a regular basis. If they’re approaching me as magical beings, then they’re removing the human definition most of them still insist on, but they’re also claiming the kind of protection and the rights that the centaurs have.”  
  
“That the centaurs have  _in your court,_ ” said Briseis, with an impressive nod of her head. “I don’t think the centaurs ever got much respect from the Ministry.”  
  
“Point.” Harry leaned back and sighed. There were times he could see the value of an addiction like Dumbledore’s, with the lemon sherbets; he could use something to do with his mouth or fingers right about now. On the other hand, then he might miss the second when Persephone decided she wanted to bite one of them. “But it’ll still bring me into open conflict with the Ministry. They’ll say that I’m supporting werewolves if I accept them, and interfering with the Ministry laws forcing them to register. And I’ll have to get Wolfsbane somehow. I don’t think I have a Potions master in my court capable of brewing it. And if I reject them, then I cause myself bad publicity with the magical creatures and the people who are supporting me mostly because I offered amnesty to everyone who wanted it.”   
  
Briseis waited, nodding a little. When Harry made it obvious that he had finished, she leaned forwards and asked, “Are you going to refuse to see Ombershade and Greenbush?”  
  
“Hell no,” Harry said, and looked around for his quill. Feathers scattered around Persephone’s break indicated that she’d probably eaten it. He contemplated plucking one of her feathers in return, for the barest moment, and decided that he wasn’t suicidal enough for that. In the meantime, he Transfigured one of the blank sheets of parchment Briseis had carried in into a quill and began to write his acceptance letter. “Just send this off by owl this morning, won’t you?”  
  
*  
  
“What is he  _doing_?”  
  
Draco looked up. He had come to associate that soft, anguished tone in Rosenthal’s voice with something Harry had done, rather than Tillipop. Tillipop’s stupidity scalded Rosenthal, who held a touching amount of faith in the Ministry’s ideals, but also rather pleased her, since it meant she had chosen the right side to back in the campaign.  
  
“What did he do now?” Draco asked, and held out his hand.  
  
Rosenthal gave him the paper without moving her head. She was looking fixedly in front of her, lips moving as though she was trying to figure out what she should write to the  _Prophet_ to excuse her candidate from any involvement in the latest Dark Lord Potter madness.  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows at the first sight of the picture, finding nothing wrong with it. Harry stood there, Persephone impressively on his shoulder, in dress robes, shaking hands with a tall man with hair and face like iron and a woman who barely came up to his shoulder. They both appeared pure-blood, from what they wore and the way they stood.  
  
Draco looked down further, and nearly choked on air. It was good that he’d already eaten.  
  
Harry was meeting with two  _werewolves_. People Draco would never have suspected of being werewolves, once he read the names, but who had obviously chosen to expose themselves to the public in the hopes of gaining something more than they would lose.  
  
“Candidate Malfoy?” Rosenthal was being formal this morning. “There are already owls here wanting to know where you stand on the meeting. What will you announce?”  
  
Draco rubbed his face. Werewolves hadn’t been an issue in the campaign until now, except for people like Granger who were always fighting for their rights, but he had a feeling they were about to become one.  
  
And he knew what he had to do.  
  
He looked up. “Write back to the people who wrote to you with complete neutrality,” he said. “When the first reporters come, we’ll inform them of that little announcement Tillipop was kind enough to make to me about him trying to blackmail me.”  
  
Rosenthal was still, looking at him like a hawk.  
  
“No,” Draco said, quietly. “I’m not going to support werewolves simply because Harry does. I have to know more about them, to see if they’re  _worth_ supporting. And he can handle fires that I can’t because of his sheer power. For now, I’ll steer away from this.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded, first once, then several times. “I thought you would always follow him,” she whispered. “Sacrifice this campaign to  _his_ interests.”  
  
“No,” said Draco, and stood. “Send out those owls, if you please. And prepare that article. We need something to distract them from werewolves.”  
  
Rosenthal bowed her head, and Draco strode away from her, moving quickly down the corridors of the Manor—but not as quickly as his heart was beating.  
  
He knew that Harry hadn’t thought about inconveniencing Draco before he received the werewolves. He hadn’t done it on  _purpose._  
  
But he also hadn’t thought about Draco’s campaign, or informed him, or given Draco a good reason to support his new position.  
  
And that meant Draco couldn’t follow him. Not now. Not yet.


	11. Separate Ways

“I’m so pleased to meet you.”  
  
Harry hid a smile, and concentrated on making sure that Persephone would stay on his shoulder instead of launch herself at someone. Hermione’s voice was as bright as her eyes, which kept darting over Greenbush’s and Ombershade’s faces. They’d posed for the official pictures in the paper; now they were having a more private conversation, although still in front of Hogwarts. And Harry had decided that it was time for Hermione to meet the werewolves he was allying with.  
  
After all, they _were_ going to be very important to her soon.  
  
“And we you, Miss Granger.” Ombershade was a gruff man, or one whose heavy jaws and silver hair made him look that way, but he could unbend towards Hermione, and even kiss her hand. Harry, who had been watching—with one hand on Persephone’s talons—relaxed a little. Ombershade and Greenbush were desperate, or cunning, to take this risk, but they were still pure-bloods. He had wanted to make sure there would be no blood politics nonsense. “We’ve heard much about your activities in the war and the way that Lord Potter wouldn’t have succeeded without you.”  
  
Harry hid another smile. Ombershade might have heard that, but he was unlikely to have brought it up, or paid attention to it, unless he already suspected what Harry intended to do. Or maybe he was just remembering that Hermione was usually a champion of magical creatures, and reckoned it couldn’t hurt to make someone who was inclined to be sympathetic to him even more so.   
  
Greenbush arched her eyebrows a little. She was the more cynical one, Harry thought, and the real power behind the Most Ancient and Noble Order of Werewolves. She had golden-amber eyes, but the light kept redefining them as hazel when she turned her head. Her hair was naturally tawny brown, as far as Harry could tell. No wonder it had been so easy for her to hide.  
  
 _Well, money and an isolated house probably helped, too._  
  
Greenbush saw him looking, and leaned towards him. “That is our liaison?” she murmured, with a nod at Hermione.  
  
Harry nodded back, and then stepped forwards to claim Hermione’s attention. She was trying to reply to Ombershade’s compliment, but she kept blushing and fumbling her words, and so this was as much for her as for everyone else. “Yes, actually,” he said, raising his voice so that both Hermione and Ombershade turned to look at him. “I thought I told you, Hermione, but maybe not. I’m putting you in charge of everything to do with the Most Ancient and Noble Order of Werewolves’s liaison with my court from this point forwards. No one knows the laws as well as you do, or has as much passion for them.”  
  
Hermione turned around and stared at him with her mouth gaping. Then she swallowed a little and asked, “The laws that you have no intention of following?”  
  
 _You try to do someone a favor,_ Harry thought. He saw a similar expression on Greenbush’s face, although she had wiped it off a second later. Harry smiled. He suspected that Greenbush would be someone he could work with.  
  
“I mean that you know the Ministry’s laws, and you can study them and come up with something better for my court,” Harry explained patiently. “It would be nice if we could make my court an attractive place not just because the Ministry has been fucking up relationships with the magical creatures for decades, but in its own right.” He kept an eye on Greenbush and Ombershade as he spoke, but neither of them seemed upset at being spoken of as magical creatures. Then again, they probably knew that they had sacrificed most of their human status when they decided to reveal themselves as werewolves.  
  
Hermione’s face twitched a little. She might have disliked his swearing, but she nodded. “Good,” she said. “I’m glad to see that you’ve started to take the issue of magical creatures and their treatment seriously at last, Harry.”  
  
Harry didn’t let his own face twitch, although he saw Greenbush look back and forth between him and Hermione as if some interesting speculations had just occurred to her. But Harry made a point of dipping his head to Hermione and murmuring, “Thank you for taking over this for me.”  
  
Hermione nodded in distraction, already turning to face the two werewolves again and ask questions. Harry moved back towards the castle. Briseis had fallen into step behind him, and Blackthorne. Harry hadn’t asked for Blackthorne to be there, but apparently he believed he should, as a Knight of the Lightning Bolt.  
  
 _And that’s still a stupid name, and it’s still one that I should change._  
  
“‘Arry!”  
  
That was Hagrid’s strong voice. Harry smiled and turned around. Hagrid was hurrying over from his hut, and following him was Anne, the rescued Muggleborn girl who had been staying with him. Her kitten was curled up on her shoulder, asleep, but it opened its eyes and lashed its tail a little when it saw Persephone. Persephone looked back down her beak, so haughty that she forgot about biting Harry on the ear or shitting down his back. Well, good.   
  
“How are you?” Harry asked Anne. It was possible that she would be too shy to talk to him, but he wanted to show that he considered she had every right to speak, if she wanted to.  
  
Anne turned and buried her face in Hagrid’s side, but Hagrid laid a hand on her shoulder that covered up most of her and the kitten and spoke fondly. “She’s adapting, just like yeh said she would. It’s goin’ slow.” For a moment, his eyes met Harry’s meaningfully. “But I don’t mind that.”  
  
“I wouldn’t mind it, either,” Harry murmured truthfully. He wished he had more time to spend with Anne. He might not be able to help her recover any better than Hagrid did, and she might be scared of his magic, so it probably wouldn’t work. But if she was able to ask questions, he could answer them, and tell her that she would able to use magic, too, and give her what she wanted with his power, and watch as she grew and flourished into a new type of person.  
  
But it was also important to run the court where she would have the best chance of growing into that happier person, so Harry nodded and stepped back. He smiled at Hagrid, and at Anne on the off chance that she happened to look up. The kitten was still watching him, or maybe Persephone. “Are you all right?” he asked Hagrid.  
  
Hagrid nodded, but gave one narrow-eyed glance at the werewolves. “We was just wonderin’ if yeh could set up some wards around the cottage,” he said. “Anne was a bit frightened the other night.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask if it was werewolves, then shut it again. Of course it wouldn’t have been, because the moon hadn’t been full. But Anne might have been scared by something else, and with werewolves on the Hogwarts grounds, Hagrid wanted to take no chances.  
  
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll come by at sunset tonight.”  
  
Hagrid beamed at him. “Great!” He turned back to Anne, and gently shepherded her in the direction of the hut. “We should see whether Fang finished off that bone,” he told her, in the rumble that made it sound like they shared an important secret, mysterious and special.  
  
Anne grinned up at him. Harry smiled. He would have to hope that he could find guardians as good for any other abused children that his people might alert him to.  
  
“I couldn’t hope noticing the discussion about wards,” Greenbush murmured, strolling over to him. When he looked, Harry could see Ombershade still involved in a discussion with Hermione, though from his slightly turned head, he knew exactly where Greenbush had gone. “Not our presence causing it, I trust?”  
  
Harry looked into her amber-hazel eyes, and smiled a little. Here was a woman who would know in an instant if Harry tried to feed her a load of bollocks, and he respected her for it.  
  
“Partially you,” he responded calmly. “Hagrid cares for all the animals of the Forest, and sometimes werewolves get in and hunt them. Now that you’re going to be around Hogwarts more often, I think he’d prefer it if he had strong wards on his house, so that no one can get in and try to eat the injured animals he keeps there.”  
  
Greenbush paused. “It _does_ get tiring to be told that one is the monster, and one is the problem,” she said softly. “I wonder if you know how much.” She didn’t have any hackles standing on end or her teeth bared, but the way she looked at him, she couldn’t have sent a clearer message if she did.  
  
“Do I know about what it’s like to be feared for things I can’t help?” Harry echoed, and couldn’t help snorting. He tilted his head so that his ear pointed towards Persephone, and then tilted it back again, the other way, so that she wouldn’t get any ideas. “Do I know what it’s like to be called a monster for the power of my magic?”  
  
Greenbush’s eyes narrowed a little further, and if Harry had thought she was going to attack him—if she was stupid enough to do that, right in the middle of his court, inside his wards, in the center of his power—that would have been the moment. And then a reluctant smile crept across her face, and she nodded.  
  
“Very well,” she said. “I understand.” She turned back towards Hermione and Ombershade, and then paused. “And you will grant us an audience if this liaison does not work out?”  
  
“I’ll always grant you an audience,” Harry said. “Even if what you want is just to complain.”  
  
He got a single harsh smile for that, and Greenbush loped off. Harry sighed and turned back towards the school.  
  
He had consequences to face now, he thought. Among other things, he hadn’t informed Draco of this move before he did it. That was partially because he had wanted to make it happen before the Ministry caught wind of it and threw some kind of mud into the works, and partially because he had wanted to dazzle Hermione and give her a project that would occupy her mind and spare him some time and trouble, and partially because—  
  
 _Would Draco have thought that we should get involved with werewolves, even ones who are pure-bloods willing to risk their reputations for the sake of fair treatment?_  
  
Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead. He had been afraid that Draco would say no, and so he had taken the choice from him, in a way. Draco could still say no, and distance himself and his campaign from it. Harry expected that was the route he would take, since commenting on werewolves extensively when he hadn’t before would endanger his run for Minister.  
  
Harry sighed again, and ignored the way that Persephone perked up and looked around for the source of his trouble. He and Draco had a personal relationship that was separate from but intertwined with their politics. He wondered if it wasn’t the right time for the politics to break off altogether. Let Draco come to Harry in private, sleep with Harry in private, and Harry could still offer him shelter if something went badly wrong. He would also offer the same to Rosenthal, Draco's adviser who had been used by the Ministry as a political weapon against Harry, although Harry hoped she would be too canny to be caught by the same tactic again.  
  
But perhaps their politics should not align so openly in the future. There were already people who suspected the connection between them—the real one, not the funding scandal Tillipop had woven out of whole cloth. Harry thought perhaps this should be the moment when they broke apart and floated separately from each other.  
  
They might not have a better one.  
  
*  
  
Draco tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair and stared at his fireplace. He had returned to his private room immediately after the rounds of speaking to Ministry people that had dominated his day. Some of them had to be reassured that they wouldn't lose their jobs after Draco became Minister; others had to be bribed to support him; others had to be persuaded that it was in their best interests to have a Minister who was actually interested in the affairs of the various Departments, instead of distant from them, as Tillipop had mostly been.  
  
But he had returned expecting to find a quiver in the ward that would tell him someone had tried to firecall him, and he had missed it by being away. He had come back, and found the ward still.  
  
Then he had taken his seat in the chair, and waited, certain that the Floo would pop open any second, with Harry trying breathlessly to explain why he had been so busy with his werewolves as not to contact Draco before.  
  
But the Floo remained stubbornly closed, the hearth cold and silent.  
  
Draco scowled, at last, and stood up, reaching for the Floo powder in his own bowl. This was _ridiculous._ It wasn't as though he _feared_ Harry, the way so many people did, and crouched and cringed back from speaking to him. He ought to be man enough to at least start the process and firecall him. If not speaking to him about the werewolves indicated some deeper political breach between them and not just carelessness on Harry's part, then Draco wanted to know as soon as possible.  
  
At first, his call received only a muffled response, the way it would if the Floo was locked. Draco frowned, debating calling back later. He didn't want to sound like the needy and fragile one, but he wanted to know what the fuck was going on.  
  
Then the Floo opened, and Harry's face appeared in the flames. The way his expression brightened when he saw Draco settled his suspicions on at least one point. Harry hadn't kept this to himself because he was getting tired of Draco, or something.  
  
"Draco," he whispered. "Am I glad to see you."  
  
Draco kept himself from melting, mostly by folding his arms and looking as stern as he could. "But not so glad that you could call me before this, and invite me to join you in your triumph over the werewolves?" he asked sweetly. "I did expect to be informed by you, instead of by the _Daily Prophet_ and all the owls asking if I had any comment on it."  
  
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. "I should have known that trying to spare you wouldn't work," he muttered. "People would ask your campaign for comments even if they thought that you didn't have anything to do with my decisions."  
  
"So what does that mean?" Draco asked, preserving his countenance even though his heart ached and sped up a little, making his eyes water. _He was giving me time to back away?_ "You don't want me in any contact with you while you work through your werewolf problem?"  
  
Harry sighed loudly enough to be irritating, his eyes fixed on Draco. " _No._ That's not what it means, at all! I was giving you a chance not to comment if you didn't want to. Our private and our public relationships are different, Draco. I couldn't alert you that the werewolves were courting me without also alerting lots of other people."  
  
"Really," Draco said, narrowing his eyes and letting them rest skeptically on Harry's face, not moving anywhere else. "But you couldn't possibly have communicated with me _privately_ to let me know what was going on?"  
  
Harry's face went through several expressions. Draco preserved a stoic, still irate silence, letting the moment fall as it would.  
  
"I didn't think of it until later," Harry said. "Everything moved so fast, and I was thinking about getting Hermione to take up the werewolf problem for me, and worrying about how it would affect things if I waited to contact them, and thinking only last about what you would say. Maybe--maybe I should have thought of it earlier. I'm sorry."  
  
"Yes, you should have," Draco said, rising to his feet with one hand clenched down at his side. "So, you've allied with the werewolves, then? And Granger is in charge of them?"  
  
"Yes," said Harry, a little cautiously, still watching them.  
  
Draco nodded once. He made sure that it was distant, the way Rosenthal would have approved of, although maybe not the way she would have wanted. "This is going to cause me a great deal of difficulty," he said casually. "There's a reason that most of the Ministers have avoided the issue of the werewolves in the past, you know. There are people dissatisfied with the laws, but none of them want the same solutions. Some want open hunting license on the werewolves, some want all of them to register, some of them want them exiled, some of them want the kind of more liberal laws that your friend Granger would favor, and--"  
  
"Don't be like this, Draco," Harry said, one hand reaching out towards him. "I'm sorry that I didn't contact you and give you time to prepare. I _am_. But I wouldn't have decided not to ally with the werewolves anyway. The most I could have done was give you a few hours, or maybe a day, of extra knowing."  
  
"That could have made the difference," Draco said, and bowed, and shut the Floo connection.  
  
He turned away, as Harry's face and open mouth puffed into green nothingness. He probably ought to find Rosenthal quickly, and tell her that he would be prepared with a statement on werewolves in the morning.  
  



	12. A Public Battle

"Ministerial Candidate Malfoy! What do you think about Dark Lord Potter's alliance with the werewolves?"  
  
Draco smiled and held up a hand. Rosenthal was there immediately, placing a parchment gravely into it. Draco opened the parchment and scanned the words he'd written there the day before, nodding as they filtered into his consciousness.  
  
He glanced up and smiled a little more when he saw the curious eyes on him. "This is such a complex issue that I needed to write something down first, and then remind myself of it," he said, and laid the parchment down on the podium in front of him. "I wish him luck. There's no doubt that he's been protecting other magical creatures in his court, and if werewolves want to claim that title, then it would be silly to exclude them."  
  
"But?" asked Rita Skeeter, a delighted snap in her voice as she held her quill over her own parchment.  
  
Draco gave her a bland look. "Dear ma'am, what do you mean by asking it like that?"  
  
"You can't give him unqualified approval, or you would have said that." Skeeter's quill scribbled away busily, but she didn't watch it, eyes fastened on Draco instead. "You're waiting for some kind of change in the wind. What change would that be? Do you think Minister Tillipop is likely also to give shelter and comfort to the werewolves?"  
  
Draco laughed, because he could, and other people laughed with him. After a moment, even Skeeter smiled, as if seeing the absurdity of her question for what it was.  
  
"I don't think my esteemed rival is likely to start supporting werewolves, no." Draco smoothed down his sleeve, aware of the fascinated eyes watching his every move. He glanced up a second later, and made his smile as apologetic as he could. "But there are complex issues surrounding everything about this. Are werewolves human, as their defenders have always insisted, or magical creatures? This Most Ancient and Noble Order of Werewolves has sought Lord Potter's protection as magical creatures, but do they speak for every single werewolf in Britain? I think not. We should try to respect the individual wishes of each werewolf while acknowledging the right of the public to stay safe."  
  
Heads nodded around him, while Draco inwardly sneered. It was babble that meant exactly nothing, like so much of the political-speak around him. He wondered that the fools didn't see that. Didn't they _know_ that anyone could say anything like this and not be pinned down? It was the serious promises people like Harry made that were most vulnerable to nit-picking.  
  
And he wasn't going to think about Harry right now, except in the political context, because he would only become upset if he did. And that wasn't fair to either his true supporters or Rosenthal, both of whom had worked hard to make sure that this day would be a success.  
  
He leaned forwards with his hands on the edges of the podium. "Do you know how many werewolf attacks there were in Britain last year?" he asked, and watched the heads of the reporters swishing back and forth obediently. He has asked Rosenthal to look it up, or he wouldn't have known either.  
  
"Five," Draco said. "Of those five, two were fatalities, judged as murder later. Two resulted in the people attacked turning into werewolves themselves. And one resulted in a death, but the werewolf, on Wolfsbane, was judged to have acted in self-defense, because she slept in a house and warded circle and her attacker had broken through all of those protections in an attempt to take her 'pelt.'" He paused. "Five is not a huge number."  
  
"Yes," said Skeeter, unexpectedly. "There were more attacks from rogue Dementors, and even from centaurs on humans who wandered into their part of the forests. But no one reports Dementors or centaurs to the Ministry, or demands they all register, or fears them the same way they fear werewolves."  
  
Draco eyed her sideways. She smiled sweetly back at him. Well, if she wanted to behave that way, playing both sides at once in hopes of the best story, Draco could hardly smack her down for it when he was doing much the same thing. He would just hope that she wouldn't manage to turn on him at the best moment for her and the worst for him.  
  
"True," Draco said. "And more attacks by vampires, at that." He faced the crowd again. "I want werewolves to speak for themselves. I want people who fear them to speak up. And that has little or nothing to do with Lord Potter allowing a few werewolves to come into his court and assume a place there."  
  
"What about all the werewolves who _do_ feel represented by the Most Ancient and Noble Order?" someone asked.  
  
Draco let his eyebrow twitch a little. "What about them? I assume they feel represented by Lord Potter and proud of the sanctuary he offered them, as well."  
  
He let his voice drift to a little stuttering halt on that implication, and then nodded and climbed down from the podium. More people threw questions at him, but Draco could just shake his head and smile and pretend not to hear as he made his way to the Apparition point.  
  
"You realize that it still sounds as though you favor granting citizenship to werewolves," Rosenthal murmured, trotting beside him and apparently checking a schedule instead of speaking. "And favor what Potter is doing."  
  
"I can't help it if sometimes my policies align with common sense," Draco said placidly. "And the policies of others."  
  
Rosenthal's mouth moved in a reluctant smile, but she shot him a sideways glance. "And what will you do if some werewolves _do_ come to you seeking representation, and a guarantee that the Ministry won't persecute them?"  
  
"I'll tell them that I have no power as yet to help them," Draco pointed out serenely. "That would take someone who's currently in political office, and I'm currently not."  
  
Rosenthal choked a little, but kept up her sedate pace. "And if they ask again when you _are_ in office, and might have the power to help them? If they offer support in exchange for your keeping those promises to them when you're elected?"  
  
"I would ask them what sort of support they could offer."  
  
"You can't get away with that kind of non-answer forever." Rosenthal was frowning into the distance now, as though someone other than Draco was causing her a problem and she would have to come up with a solution for it.  
  
"That's all they want of me right now." Draco stopped and turned towards her, making sure that he spoke quietly enough that no one else could hear, but also strongly enough to catch and hold her attention. "That's all they may ever want of me. Listen. I have no illusions about how many of them _like_ me. But what matters is that I can convince them that they would be better off with me in office."  
  
Rosenthal only frowned at him, as though he was speaking some language she didn't understand, instead of the language she had been urging him to speak all along. "You think you can still convince them of that when they see that you aren't keeping promises?'  
  
"When I become Minister, I'll have a different sort of restriction on me than I do now," Draco said, and shrugged. "Time and money and power, and all that. I can't keep promises to everyone. I can do this one this month, but I have to think about what the other voters who elected me want."  
  
Rosenthal nodded slowly. "That was what I was urging you to do," she said. "Less commitment. Why are you taking this stance now?"  
  
Draco bit his lip to avoid saying something about Harry. She wouldn't trust anything that stemmed from either trying to battle Harry or make Harry notice him, and he knew that. But it was _true,_ that was the problem.  
  
"I've come to see that I can't run my campaign the way I was," he murmured instead. "Standing up for Dark Lord Potter all the time. He has the power to face what's coming, and I don't. I can't simply incinerate people who oppose me. He can do that if he wants, so let him do it."  
  
"He would do that?" Rosenthal's eyes had widened, her face going pale.  
  
Draco shot her a mocking glance before he could stop himself. "Of course not," he snapped, when he realized that she was still looking at him with a kind of dread fascination. "You think he lives for that sort of shit? He wouldn't. He would use his magic to paralyze them instead, and smile at them, and warn them not to attack Hogwarts, and then let them go."  
  
"But _you're_ proposing something different." Rosenthal regarded him thoughtfully.  
  
Draco nodded. He was coming to realize how much Rosenthal had looked on him as a guide to Harry's behavior, and he wanted to slide out of that position as soon as he could. If he wasn't important enough to Harry for Harry to have told him about the werewolves right away, he was the last sort of guide she should trust. "I am. I'm proposing that I campaign exactly like the Minister I'm going to be, compromising and pulling dirty tricks all the time."  
  
"I can do that," said Rosenthal. "It means that I'll have to redraft some of the speeches I have ready and the owls I sent out, though."  
  
Draco smiled at her. "I have faith in you. What else did I hire you for?"  
  
"To advise you." Rosenthal bent towards him, the braid her hair was in this morning swinging, and there was no gentleness in her smile now. "And what I say now is: don't act against him because you're irritated that he didn't ask your advice, or didn't tell you about something. That would be stupid, and against the best interests of your own position. Is that the reason you're doing this?"  
  
Draco exhaled slowly, reminded himself that no one but himself and Harry really understood the complexity of their relationship and therefore he couldn't be angry at Rosenthal for misunderstanding, and finally shook his head. "I need to do something. He didn't inform me about taking in the werewolves before he did. I have to handle the resulting situation _somehow_."  
  
"I agree." Rosenthal's voice was calm, precise, infuriating. "I merely wondered whether _this_ was the right way to do it."  
  
"For now, it is," Draco said, and gave her a distant smile. "You always told me that I shouldn't let the personal ties I have to him tangle me up too much and interrupt the campaign. I'm separating those now. Personal to one side, political to the other. I'll favor the positions I need to, and do the things I need to, to get myself elected."  
  
Rosenthal closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. Draco reached towards her, alarmed. He knew that Rosenthal had sworn her own specific oath to Harry. Had something he'd done triggered a restriction of it that Draco didn't remember?  
  
But she opened her eyes before he could touch her, took a step back, and made it into a neat bow. "I'm just relieved that you've finally come to your senses," she whispered.  
  
  
Draco opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He decided to take Rosenthal seriously, and at face value, and reminded himself that no Ministerial candidate who had abandoned the campaign to focus on a relationship with his spouse or even his family had ever been elected.  
  
That didn't stop it from hurting. It did confirm that he couldn't simply retreat without destroying Rosenthal's trust in him, and he _needed_ her trust.  
  
"Glad that you think so," he said. "Now, I want you to determine exactly how much Wolfsbane costs, and how much I could get away with offering to reduce that cost."  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at the letter that the owl had brought back unopened, and sighed and leaned sideways in his chair. The owl watched him from a perch in the corner of the room, blinking mild yellow eyes.  
  
Harry shook his head. "I don't need you for anything else," he said, and a round tunnel opened in the stones, one that would guide the bird directly back to the Owlery.  
  
It hadn't taken the owls long to overcome their fear of flying through the tunnels, once they had learned that, that way, they didn't have to venture out into the rain and the wind and whatever else was happening outside. It hooted happily this time and rose, wings fanning out around it, as it soared away.  
  
Harry let his magic close the tunnel when he was sure the owl was safe and buried his head in his hands. Then he grimaced and lifted it again. He had too much to do. Just because Draco was refusing both his firecalls and his letters was no reason to despair. He knew that Ron and Hermione's marriage had survived stresses deeper than this, including their last fight over staying in Hogwarts with him.  
  
He would get through this somehow, he reminded himself. And if things got too bad, he could go to the Manor and walk through the wards the way he had done before, when he wanted to see Draco right away and wasn't concerned about how it would look to him.  
  
 _The problem is, this time I_ am _concerned about how it would look to him._  
  
He had just turned resolutely towards the large stack of correspondence awaiting him when Persephone knocked at the window. Harry rolled his eyes, waved his hand to open it, and kept sifting through the letters. Lately, it seemed all the pleas he was getting to reside in his court had something ridiculous about them. Why did they think it was a _good_ idea to tell him that they hated him and supported the Ministry, but wanted to live with him anyway because he wouldn't make them pay taxes?  
  
Persephone landed on the back of his chair and cocked her head around his to eye the letters. Harry watched her carefully as he slit open the first letter and considered it. At least this one didn't make the naked claim that the writer only wanted to come to his court because it would be cheaper, but it did include an anxious question about how many magical creatures lived with Harry, and whether she would have to _see_ centaurs. "I have a young daughter, you know," she wrote.  
  
Harry sighed and massaged his forehead. He knew how he would have to respond--cautiously, diplomatically, but refusing--and he already didn't look forward to writing his answer.  
  
Persephone picked the letter up in a curious beak and nibbled it for a second. Then she dropped it in front of him. Harry blinked at her. That wasn't like her. Usually she would tear the thing to pieces, set it on fire, or ignore it altogether.  
  
Persephone hopped down onto the table and walked back and forth a second, tail fanned out, shaking her head at the full stretch of her neck. Harry still didn't know what the fuck she was doing, but watching her was more entertaining than answering the letters, so he kept doing it.  
  
Persephone picked up the corner of the unopened letter he'd sent to Draco in her beak this time, watching him. Harry smiled a little. "You can burn that one up if you want," he said. "I already sent it, and he didn't want it."  
  
There was a little moment of silence, when Harry thought Persephone would avail herself of his invitation. Then she abruptly turned and launched herself back out the window with a small wriggle of her wings and rump, and left Harry blinking.  
  
Only when he looked back at his desk did he realize that she'd taken the unopened letter with her.  
  
Harry swore for a moment, and ran to the window, looking for her. He was able to see a disappearing dark shape, high over the Forbidden Forest, flying south, in what he knew was the general direction of Malfoy Manor.  
  
 _He's going to think that I sent Persephone because he wouldn't talk to me. He's going to think that I intruded where I wasn't wanted._  
  
Harry sighed and sat down again a second later, shaking his head. No, it was likely that Draco wouldn't think that. He knew that Persephone was barely under Harry's control, if at all. And she would do what would displease him if she could, something that Harry didn't want her to do. Harry had already given up on manipulating her by reverse psychology, which was something Hermione had suggested to him. Persephone was always able to figure out what he _really_ wanted, and would do the opposite, instead of what he was pretending to want her to do.  
  
She knew him too well.  
  
Her behavior was still unusual, though, given that she hadn't really tried to offer him violence, and Harry figured it out after a moment of thinking. She found what he was doing, reading his letters and trying to be a responsible Lord, boring. So she did something that would make him less boring, even if it was only because he and Draco would be yelling at each other and he would get more upset than he had been at the moment. It was the same reason Persephone had approved of Hermione at first. She made Harry upset, therefore she was welcome, as far as Persephone was concerned. She only disapproved when Harry and Hermione started to get along again.  
  
And if the letter she delivered broke the silence between them and made them talk to each other again...  
  
Harry found that he could regret his own behavior, and the way that Draco had refused his letters and his firecalls, but not this.  
  



	13. Flames

Draco heard a window break in the sitting room two doors down the corridor, and he was on his feet with his wand in hand, creating a defensive shield in front of him, before the house-elves could even call his name in warning.   
  
He had expected something like this, he had to admit, as he stood still and waited for either the elves or Rosenthal, staying over this evening, to bring him news. Assassination attempts on Ministerial candidates weren't that common, but neither were they unknown. It was likely that the Ministry, or someone else whose interests Draco was working against, would get a bit desperate.  
  
At the moment, though, they were incompetent assassins, since they hadn't even got the room he was sitting in right. Draco was inclined to stand still instead of running around and panicking.  
  
The door of his own room opened a few minutes later. Draco leveled his wand, but nodded when Rosenthal peered inside, even though she had a strange expression on her face. Well, Draco couldn't blame her for that. His own heart was only hitting down on every other beat, it seemed.  
  
"What happened?" he asked.  
  
"This did," Rosenthal said, and leaned more fully into the room. He saw Persephone sitting on her shoulder then, glittering with blue-black flames that traveled only a centimeter or so from her feathers. She had one talon on Rosenthal's shoulder and the other on her neck, pressing down so hard that Draco rapidly changed his opinion of Rosenthal's expression. She was brave for not screaming.  
  
In Persephone's beak was a letter.  
  
Draco glared at her. "So he had to send a black phoenix to get my attention, did he?" he snapped. "Can't he _accept_ that I have no interest in talking to him?"  
  
Persephone waggled her tail at him, and then launched herself from her perch on Rosenthal, soaring straight over to him. Draco flinched before he could stop himself, but Persephone simply landed on his shoulder, too. Draco shuddered all over. He could feel the phoenix's weight, sure, but even more, he could feel the Dark magic that spread out from her. How did Harry bear it?  
  
 _Unless he's further gone regarding Dark magic than I thought, and he doesn't mind it all that much._  
  
Persephone slowly held out her head until Draco had to jerk his own head back or get stabbed in the eye by her beak. Then she opened her beak and dropped the letter at his feet. And then she took off and landed on the windowsill, preening herself and looking for all the world like an owl who waited to take a letter back.  
  
Draco grimaced as he looked down at the letter. Somehow, he didn't think this was a time when he would be able to get away with not giving a response.  
  
He stooped down and picked the envelope up, not taking his eyes off Persephone. She did nothing but give him a single bright look before turning to tend to what seemed to be an important itch in the middle of her back.  
  
Draco swallowed a little and looked back at the letter. He knew it was from Harry already, because who else would send a letter with Persephone? But it was still a slight shock to see Harry's handwriting on it when he slid it free from the envelope.  
  
 _Dear Draco,_  
  
 _I'm so sorry for not telling you about the werewolves before I announced my decision. You're right, it's a major decision that I should have allowed you to be ready for. It wouldn't have had any influence on whether or not I let them into my court, but you could have used some time to get ready politically._  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows. That was more reasonable than he had feared, both the apology and the acknowledgment that Harry would have gone ahead and made up his mind on the status of the werewolves without asking for Draco's approval.  
  
 _I think I convinced myself that this would be a good thing, an opportunity for you to distance yourself from me politically if that was what you wanted. I forgot that it might not be what you wanted._  
  
Also halfway reasonable. Draco tapped his finger against his mouth. It was becoming harder for him to remember why he had been so angry at Harry that he had started refusing all his owls and firecalls.  
  
On the other hand, why in the world had Harry thought he would want to distance himself politically? Draco didn't know if that was just another case, acuter this time than usual, of Harry's political stupidity, or something more severe. He went back to reading.  
  
 _Hermione and Briseis and Rosenthal and everyone else has reminded me how difficult associating with me is for your campaign. And I still remember that the initial alliance we made was about me helping you get elected, as well as you doing whatever you could to support my bid to retain control of Hogwarts. I feel like I haven't done a lot to help you. I've tarnished your reputation and made the campaign harder for you, if anything_.  
  
 _I think you're angrier at me because I made the werewolf decision for you than you are about the campaign, though. Write back to me so I can be sure._  
  
 _Yours, always,_  
 _Harry_.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. Yes, it was a sort of political stupidity on Harry's part. They had grown so much beyond that initial alliance that Draco wasn't sure why Harry was suddenly having an attack of conscience about it.  
  
But he wasn't going to be sloughed off and ignored in the name of being separate political entities in public. He thought about writing back, but it seemed so much simpler just to go to Hogwarts and talk to Harry.  
  
When he took a step towards the fireplace, though, he abruptly had a faceful of flying, screaming black phoenix.  
  
Draco stumbled away, one hand defensively up. He felt talons curl around and score the back of his hand, and he swore and jumped, trying to hit Persephone without thinking about it. Then he drew his wand and raised a Shield Charm, which he should have done in the first place. He knew that Harry wouldn't be happy about Draco getting injured, but he would probably feel the same about Draco injuring his phoenix.  
  
Persephone screamed so hard that the walls trembled, and flew straight through the shield.  
  
Draco probably would have stood there like an idiot and let her scratch his face, except that a spell grabbed his ankles and yanked, making him fall flat to the ground. Persephone soared overhead and, from the sound of it, started circling around to try and get him again.  
  
"I'll write back!" Draco yelled as loud as he could.  
  
There was silence. A second later, Rosenthal stepped towards him and held out a hand to help him up. Draco grasped it and let her pull him up, nodding his thanks. He already knew that it was her spell that had saved him.  
  
He looked around the room apprehensively, and spotted Persephone on the far side of it, back near the window. She gave him a single bland look before she once again returned to grooming her feathers as though she had never done anything else.  
  
"Fucking bird," Draco muttered, and then sat down and began to write. Rosenthal already had parchment and ink ready for him, although that might have been coincidence. She gave him a single significant look, but it could have meant a lot of things, and Draco just shook his head and wrote without speaking.  
  
 _Dark Lord Potter,_  
 _Tell your crazy bird that I'm willing to come and talk with you. That doesn't mean that I'm willing to do anything else, yet._  
  
He didn't bother signing it, even though he was sure that no one would stop and intercept Persephone, and so he didn't really have to worry about someone finding out about their connection this way. If Harry didn't know who it was from, he was too stupid to be worth Draco's time, anyway.  
  
Draco stood up and turned around, letter extended a nice distance from him. Persephone immediately soared up, took it from his hand, and circled back to the window. Draco tried to raise his wand so he could Vanish the glass before she smashed through it, the way she evidently had with his last window.  
  
Too late. Black and purple flames flickered out from Persephone's body, and she simply _melted_ a hole in the glass that was exactly as big as her spread wings. She flew out and up, soaring so fast that Draco didn't have time to blink before he lost sight of her.  
  
"Why would Lord Potter attempt to gain your attention in such a harsh way?"  
  
Draco turned around. Rosenthal was already holding a Healing Potion. Draco accepted it and swallowed it. He often had a headache or tension in his shoulders of some kind after making a long speech, and Rosenthal was competent enough to know that this situation wouldn't be much less stressful.  
  
"I don't know that he had much to do with it," Draco said. "He's never sent Persephone on an errand like this before, even when she would be the safest option. My guess is that he didn't know what she intended to do, and she left with the letter before he could stop her."  
  
Rosenthal frowned some more. "I own, I would be happier if I could believe that."  
  
"I'm going to believe it until I have reason to learn otherwise," Draco said shortly, and reached for his cloak. "Meanwhile, I'm going to Hogwarts. Don't wait up for me."  
  
"Don't do anything stupid," Rosenthal murmured before Draco could disappear into the fireplace.  
  
Draco made a face at her and strode over to cast Floo powder in. His ability to control his temper depended as much on what Harry did as what he had made up his mind to do.  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes for a second. He managed not to groan, but only because he'd already been through sixteen other interviews already and this was the last one.  
  
"Mrs. Finkleworth," he said, "I don't think you quite understand. If you become a citizen of my court, you will be obligated to at least be civil to other people who live in it, the same way you would if you were still in the wider wizarding world. You can't be rude to Muggleborns or centaurs just because you want to."  
  
"I never said I would be rude," said the stiff woman in front of him, who was still sitting on the very edge of her chair when Harry opened his eyes to check. "Only that I would remind them of their place. I hope _rank_ still has a meaning in a world like the one you are building."  
  
Harry studied her with dislike. Horatia Finkleworth had written him a reasonable letter, and he had agreed to meet with her based on that. But in person, she was an overbearing woman who reminded him of an Augusta Longbottom gone rotten. She just didn't understand that her attitudes weren't shared by everyone.  
  
"Let me put it to you this way," Harry said, deciding to be blunt. He leaned back in his chair. They were up in his office, and he had to resist the temptation to put his feet up on his desk. "My mother was Muggleborn. Would you be rude to _her_ if you saw her walking down a corridor?"  
  
Mrs. Finkleworth's mouth dropped open a little. "Well, of course not! She gave birth to a powerful son, and married into a pure-blood family!"  
  
Harry's eyes narrowed further. "I'll consider your application to live in my court, and let you know my decision in a few days," he said. It was obvious to any fool, he thought, what his decision would be, but Mrs. Finkleworth stood up brushing off her robes and nodding to him, so she was worse than a fool.  
  
"I'm glad that your court isn't closed to pure-bloods," she said, as she bustled towards the door. "You need some ballast here, someone who can remind you of wizarding traditions."  
  
Harry counted under his breath until she was gone, partially because Hogwarts was trying to open a trapdoor under her and he had to persuade the castle he was calm, and then sighed. He'd _have_ to read the letters more carefully. Only three of the families or people he had interviewed today showed any sign of realizing that they couldn't have life in his court all the way they wanted it.  
  
 _Is the Ministry portraying me as a pushover or something? Or haven't I made it clear what I want, in spite of everything?_  
  
That was when he noticed that his Floo was jumping and flashing with the subtle colored lights it used when someone wanted to come through and it was locked. Harry stared, then waved his hand hastily. That flash of white followed by green meant it was Draco.  
  
Persephone landed on his desk with a letter at the same moment as Draco finally stepped through and shook soot and dust from his cloak and hair. The glare that he leveled at Harry was impressive.  
  
"Did you _mean_ to keep me waiting?" he asked. "And you sent such an impressive letter, too. Speedy delivery."  
  
Harry started to answer, but surged to his feet when he saw the scratch on the back of Draco's hand. "Who did that to you?" he demanded, walking around the desk so that he could cradle Draco's hand and glare at it.  
  
"Your precious phoenix." Draco had a spectacular sneer, too. "I know you probably didn't tell her to, but in her insistence on me writing back, she may have taken her orders a bit _too_ literally."  
  
Harry turned around and scowled at Persephone. Persephone promptly turned her head to pick at her feathers, and ostentatiously flicked a wing at the letter she'd carried, shoving it towards him.  
  
"Did you do this?" Harry asked her, and his voice came out more deadly quiet than he'd meant it to.  
  
Persephone curled her head upside-down, studying him with one eye. Harry remembered Hermione saying something about how birds did that because they couldn't look at you straight on, due to their beaks. He wasn't amused. He knew perfectly well that Persephone could look at him if she _wanted_ to; she only pretended not to be able to when she wanted to protect herself against his anger.  
  
"Did you do this?" he repeated, voice quiet.  
  
Persephone turned and flew out the window she'd flown through to deliver the letter.  
  
Harry sighed and turned to Draco. "I'm sorry. I really didn't tell her to do that, I promise."  
  
Draco eyed him for a few seconds, and then snorted and offered him a tentative smile. "Well. Fine. Although what meant more to me was the apology in your letter."  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows, then nodded. Right. Persephone would have insisted on Draco reading the letter, the way the owls didn't have the power to do. "I should have thought of what you could do with the warning," he said.  
  
"But you wouldn't have changed your mind about including the werewolves in your court, or announcing that decision publically," Draco said, and folded his arms as though that would keep him from lunging forwards and shaking Harry.  
  
"I might have delayed the announcement a bit, if you told me that you needed time to come up with a strategy," Harry said. "But no."  
  
Draco watched him stolidly. "The more I think about this, the more bewildered I get. What did you hope to _accomplish_ by distancing yourself from me, even assuming that I would be willing to let you go? Did you think that there were people who wouldn't connect us because they were dazzled by the fact that I hadn't said anything about werewolves while you had?"  
  
Harry winced. "Well, of course, when you put it like _that_ , it sounds stupid," he complained.  
  
"Answer me," Draco said.  
  
Harry sighed. "I did want to give you the chance to back up. I did think that I was dragging your campaign down. I suppose that I didn't want to face up to you having a negative reaction, or telling me that I was being silly, when I did--I really did think that I might be causing you problems. But in trying to avoid that, I just caused you some _more_. I'm sorry."  
  
Draco was silent, frowning. Then he nodded. "Apology accepted," he said. "But I want some advance notice in the future of any huge thing you plan. Not individuals being accepted into your court, or you deciding to set up new defenses. But admitting a whole species of new magical creatures? That's huge."   
  
"All right," Harry said meekly.  
  
Draco frowned at him again. "I haven't completely forgiven you."  
  
"I know," Harry said. "I think that's the way it should be."  
  
Draco rolled his eyes and came forwards to kiss him. "Ridiculous martyr complex," he muttered, and turned towards the fire.  
  
"Let me," Harry said, and reached out to catch Draco's hand. When he concentrated on it, the scratch faded and knitted back into the skin, a thin red line persisting for a minute before it also vanished.  
  
"Thank you," Draco said, and his face was softer this time as he kissed Harry again. But he still didn't stay, and after a moment of watching him go, Harry had to acknowledge that they probably both needed time.   
  
Meanwhile, he had to think of what he was going to do with Persephone when she came back. Whether he let her get away with injuring him or not, he wasn't going to permit it when it came to his friends and lover.  
  



	14. Feathers to Fly With

"Well,  _this_ is new."  
  
Harry shifted over. Briseis had been sorting through letters when he'd come into the office, and Harry had flopped back into his chair and left her to get on with it, still exhausted from the interviews he'd done. But her tone of voice had made it obvious that he wasn't going to get much rest this afternoon.  
  
"What?" he asked, and Briseis, with that irritating sense of drama she sometimes had, put the letter into his hand without telling him what it was.  
  
It was a huge, snowy envelope with dun and cream markings on the edges, and the golden Ministry seal in the middle. Harry raised his eyebrows. He didn't think he'd ever received a letter this fancy from the Ministry, not even when they sent him the post that told him he'd passed through the training program and been officially accepted as an Auror.  
  
"Well, go on, open it."   
  
When Harry looked up, Briseis was wobbling on the edge of her seat. Her eyes were fixed on the envelope, and she was licking her lips, her face so pale that Harry narrowed his own eyes. This wasn't just excitement. "Do you sense something about this letter?" he demanded, and waved it around.  
  
Briseis sighed and shifted her gaze to his face, also sitting down in her chair like a normal person. "I told you that those feelings were hard to define. Yes, there's something of the same kind coming from that letter. But it doesn't have to have much to do with who sent it or wrote it. It could be connected to someone who was in the room at the time, or made suggestions as to what to put in it. Or even just the person who took it to the owl they used. That's how hard this is, how imprecise."  
  
Harry nodded after a minute, accepting that, even with a kind of jolt of humor. Of course he would be the one who got the adviser with the potentially useful gift that couldn't actually be pinned down and made to give an answer.   
  
He slit open the envelope, and caught sight of a tremble of color out of the corner of his eye. Once again, he vanished the glass before Persephone could crash into it. Persephone landed on the corner of his desk and craned her neck around to watch the envelope. Harry waited, but she didn't object to him opening it or look as if she was laying traps for any of his fingers, so he went on reading it.  
  
 _This is a declaration of war. The Ministry is pleased to inform Dark Lord Harry Potter that he is now considered an enemy of state, under the Dark Lords Act (1998)._  
  
That was all that was in it. Harry turned the paper--as nice as the envelope--around, and raised his eyebrows. "It's no wonder your intuition found nothing to focus on," he told Briseis. "This is only two lines long."  
  
Briseis snatched the letter from him, frowning, and Persephone crooned and flew over to land on Harry's shoulder. Harry turned to her in resignation. "And  _you_ know that something bad is coming, don't you?" he asked.  
  
Persephone gave him a little coo and cocked her head. She didn't even bother to nip at his chin, which Harry thought must mean that she knew  _exactly_ what it was, and she was looking forward to it happening.  
  
"You don't want to give me a hint?" he asked, since Briseis was still frowning at the letter instead of trying to say something to him.  
  
Persephone gave an excited stretch of her wings, kicking out with one leg down the fan of feathers, and snuggled in towards his ear. She didn't try to bite his earlobe, either. Harry had to shiver and shrug her off, then turn to Briseis.  
  
"Can you make anything out of that?" he asked. "Or at least tell me what the Dark Lords Act is?"  
  
"It was an act the Wizengamot passed saying that the Ministry had to move at once against someone who proclaimed himself a Dark Lord," said Briseis, and looked up quickly to give him a flashing smile. "Notice that they only passed it  _after_ Voldemort was dead." She looked thoughtfully back down. "And honestly, I don't know why they didn't do something about it before now. It would be an easy excuse to go after you."  
  
"Perhaps someone in the Ministry still hoped to settle it peacefully?" Harry suggested, leaning back. Persephone took off, perhaps because he had crushed her tail feathers against the back of the chair, but since she flipped her wings and proceeded to do a little dance in the middle of the office, Harry doubted that. "Or maybe Tillipop thought sustaining a war would be too much of an effort, and wanted to focus on his campaign."  
  
Briseis snorted and folded up the letter. "I'd place more money on the last one. The Ministry hasn't been conciliating to you since the day you proclaimed yourself."  
  
Harry nodded gloomily, unsurprised. So he had some unspecified danger pressing in on him, and Persephone rejoicing, which meant it was probably bigger than he knew, and the Ministry with a desire to come after him. And Briseis couldn't give him any more advice, either.  
  
Someone knocked on the door briefly before they opened it. Hermione leaned in, her face a little pale. "Harry? There are Aurors at the edge of the grounds."  
  
Harry growled and stood up. The Ministry had learned well from their last mistakes, not that he wanted it to happen. They knew that Hogwarts would only alert him of enemies if they actually stepped onto the grounds. If they were outside the wards, then Harry would be unable to sense them through his bond with Hogwarts.   
  
"Fine," he said. "I'll come." He raised an eyebrow at Persephone, who was still dancing with her own tail, fluttering around the long feathers as though she enjoyed the sensation of her wings touching the edges of the plumes. "Are you coming?"  
  
Persephone chirped smugly and soared after him, landing on his shoulder again as he strode out the door of his office. Harry shook his head. Well, he supposed that might make him marginally more frightening to his enemies.  
  
*  
  
"Candidate Malfoy, can't you give me any more solid answer as to what you're going to do about the werewolves?"  
  
Draco pasted a weary smile on his face, and leaned forwards so that he could examine the woman in front of him. She was a reporter, he knew, and that meant he had to answer and couldn't get exasperated. But he thought she was the same one who had asked him about werewolves at the last three speeches he'd given, and since he couldn't give a different answer, he had to wonder about her persistence.  
  
"Can I ask why?" he murmured. "Are you perhaps a werewolf yourself, or do you have a relative or a friend who's one?"  
  
That made laughter bubble and race along the edges of the garden in Malfoy Manor where this particular speech was taking place, and the reporter turn red to her ears. But she looked straight at him and said simply, with a dignity Draco had to admire, "No, sir. I'm just someone who's extremely interested in the rights that magical creatures should have."  
  
Draco inclined his head. He could admire that, yes. "I can't give you more of an answer than I have so far. I'll be happy to talk with any werewolves who want to support me. So far, no one's come forwards to do so."  
  
"Then their support of Lord Potter doesn't count?" That was Rita Skeeter, apparently in a combative mood today, leaning back on the chair behind her and considering him with squinted eyes and one quill tapping on his parchment.  
  
Draco sighed. "Their support for Lord Potter was because he could give them a place in his court. They haven't come to me and made any such bargain, or asked for anything like the same safety and security. I wouldn't have it to offer them unless I was elected Minister."  
  
"Do you consider that so unlikely an occurrence?" Yes, Skeeter's lips were quirking up in that way which meant she had decided that it would be most entertaining today to oppose him. Draco had to restrain another exasperated sigh.  
  
He opened his mouth to answer, still planning to couch it in vivid half-truths, and then the world exploded around him.  
  
Even as Draco wrapped his arms around his head and rolled on the ground to put out the flames on his burning clothes, he smelled the lightning in the air and knew exactly what had happened. Someone had cast the Portable Thunderstorm Curse right at his feet, and destroyed his podium and stage.  
  
They had  _meant_ to destroy him, that was certain.  
  
Draco leaped back to his feet, beat out the last flames, and snatched out his wand. Rosenthal was busy tugging on his arm, urging him to retreat, but Draco held still. He wanted to see how many people were dead or injured, something he knew he would be blamed for, and he wanted to catch a glimpse of the perpetrator, if he could.  
  
He could see no one immediately in the mass of moaning, shrieking, rocking people. Draco narrowed his eyes. He was willing to believe that they could have got away, but he had to admit, he didn't see  _how_.  
  
Then someone moved above him, and Draco tilted his head back and shielded his eyes with one hand.  
  
There was a figure on the  _roof_ of Malfoy Manor, dressed in a heavy cloak and holding the hood forwards as though they couldn't be bothered with a glamour on their face. They strolled to the edge of the roof and stood looking down at Draco, in a silence that Draco felt was contemplative.  
  
Draco cleared his throat. He might sound ridiculous, but he was still going to fling a challenge in the figure's fucking teeth. "Had enough of being up there? Think you might want to come down?"  
  
He had the impression that the figure smiled, although he didn't know how he could tell that, since the cloak really  _did_ cover the whole face. Then it spread its arms and leaped into the air, turning head over heels as though it was a clown.  
  
Draco's Stunner followed Rosenthal's spell, which would have made a net materialize and fall on top of the figure, by mere seconds. But it did no good. The figure simply turned to mist and smoke in mid-air and faded away before either spell could touch it.  
  
Draco swallowed. His heart was pounding wildly, and he didn't understand why the attacker hadn't used another spell to hurt him, since the first curse hadn't worked.  
  
Then he looked around at the gasping, moaning people, and shook his head. "Go and firecall St. Mungo's," he told Rosenthal, and she nodded and raced off without pausing.  _Probably only because she thinks it won't look good for me if someone dies at one of these press conferences,_ Draco thought humorlessly, and folded his fingers down against his hand.  
  
Perhaps the Portable Thunderstorm Curse had been one of those spells that would have made a good assassination attempt if it had succeeded, but since it hadn't, the assassin could pretend that he had meant it as a warning instead. It would be nice if Draco knew what he was being warned  _of,_ though.  
  
He moved forwards to kneel beside the young reporter who had asked him so often about werewolves, both because he wanted to make sure someone he admired was okay and because it would look good for the cameras, if any of them were still flashing. She seemed to be all right, from what Draco could tell. A few burns, but the fires had gone out before doing her any damage, and she was breathing.  
  
"Candidate Malfoy."  
  
Draco started and looked up. Rita Skeeter was standing in front of him, and there was a militant look to her face that made Draco rise slowly to his feet, about to put his hands up and proclaim that he hadn't hurt the woman he was crouching beside.  
  
"They dared to attack the  _press_ ," said Skeeter, and glared at him. "Probably because they thought we might report something unflattering about Tillipop."  
  
Draco bit his lip, severely hard, so that he wouldn't say what he thought of that, and inclined his head instead. "Are you sure, madam? It seemed as though the Portable Thunderstorm Curse was aimed at me." He might be able to use Skeeter's reaction, but he didn't want to try to take advantage of a paper-thin shield.  
  
"I'm sure." Skeeter tossed her hair out of her eyes, her expression still full of outrage. "I was standing there, of course. And so were a few other people the Unspeakables might want to get rid of."  
  
Draco blinked. "You think it's Unspeakables?" He supposed that might fit with the way the cloaked figure had disappeared, although Draco would have thought the assassination spell would be a little more unusual in that case.  
  
 _Unless it really was just meant as a warning._  
  
"I'm  _sure_ of it." Skeeter's nostrils were flaring. "I have an article that's getting ready to come out on them and their shady ways. It's typical of them to imagine they can take me out, and then the  _Prophet's_ editors might be too scared to print the article." She looked straight at Draco and gripped her quill. "They can't take me out that way. I want you to tell me everything you can think of that hurts Minister Tillipop, and then I'm going to  _print_ it."  
  
Draco bit his lip again, and nodded. "That would be a good way to make him think better, now that you mention it."  
  
Skeeter assumed an alert expression and motioned with her quill towards her parchment. "It only remains for you to tell me what you want."  
  
Draco smiled slowly, and began to speak.  
  
*  
  
"So," Harry said, appearing behind the Aurors, "it would help if you told me why you were here, so that we can get past the initial unpleasantness and get to the  _detailed_ unpleasantness."  
  
The leap the Aurors made into the air, and the way they came down and drew wands, was entertaining. Persephone leaned forwards off Harry's shoulder--she'd had no trouble with his Apparition off the grounds and into the grass behind the Aurors--and snapped her beak suggestively. One young man aimed his wand at her, but the senior Auror who appeared to be in charge of the investigation reached out, with a sigh, and wrenched his arm down.  
  
"Dark Lord Potter?" she asked, as if there was any room for doubt.  
  
Harry gave an exaggerated nod. Persephone snapped her beak again, which probably was her version of a snicker.  
  
"We've been asked to make sure that you received the Ministry's latest communication, detailing the state of war that you are now in, as entities." The woman's voice was brisk, business-like, but her gaze flickered nervously over to Persephone.  
  
Harry nodded again. "I have. And that means you can go away now." He gestured, and thick ropes of black and green braided magic rose from the ground and headed towards them like snakes. "Unless you have some reason to stay?"  
  
"Fuck, no!" blurted the boy from the back, the one who had aimed his wand at Persephone.  
  
" _Try_ to be professional, Matthewson," said the woman, half-closing her eyes. "Good. Then you acknowledge the delivery of the communication."  
  
Harry nodded.  
  
Several Stunners flew at him at once.  
  
Harry raised a wall of dirt and grass with a single gesture of his hand. He didn't stand on the grounds of Hogwarts, but his magic could still delve into the earth and raise it up, and that was what he did. The Stunners rebounded from the curved wall suddenly in front of him, and Harry heard the Aurors swearing in startled frustration.  
  
He stepped out from the wall and strolled towards them, speaking to the woman in charge although his focus on all of them at once. "So, does that mean that you'll do your best to kill me, and I have the right to do the same to you?" He clenched his hand, and nets formed above his head, meshes of sparkling golden light. "That sounds fair to me. Especially because you have your wands and I don't."  
  
He whirled the nets like bolos and threw them over the heads of the Aurors who looked as if they'd cast again any second. They went down under them, and Harry fastened the corners of the nets to the earth with an easy gesture. Then he turned to the woman who headed them, a little curious as to what she would say.  
  
She said nothing, because she had aimed her wand, and the next instant, a pain more incapacitating than any Stunner hit Harry and took him to the ground.  
  
He lifted his head, gasping, and wondered how she could have hit him with a spell that he hadn't even seen coming.  
  
Then he saw that it wasn't him she had caught, but Persephone, in a flow of ice that made Persephone shriek and flail her wings, and the pain was spreading through him, darkening his vision, making him stagger, driving him towards the ground, and then into unconsciousness.


	15. Persephone's Flaw

“He’s coming around. Let him wake up. It should be all right as long as we keep both of them imprisoned at the same time.”  
  
Harry grimaced as he opened his eyes. The last thing he wanted to think about was why he would be hearing those words.  
  
Then he came fully back to consciousness, and realized that there was something worse than that. He couldn’t feel Hogwarts, or any of the magic that should have enwrapped him in a protective shield.  
  
Harry held back the shout he wanted to give, and only clenched his hands a little. When he turned his head, he saw that he was hovering above the floor of an office in what looked like a bubble of blue air. It was so soft and smooth that he hadn’t been able to tell the difference between it and a bed. He wondered if that was a good sign, if his enemies were planning to keep him alive instead of kill him.  
  
Another bubble of blue air hung on the opposite side of the office, behind a mahogany desk. It held Persephone, who looked as though she was frozen instead of simply being held. Her wings were pinned straight out to the sides, and she stared motionlessly straight ahead.  
  
“Ah, Mr. Potter. You do present us with a conundrum.”  
  
Harry turned his head. Nothing hurt, he noted, although he thought he must have hit his head hard when he fell. The bubble seemed to give him no sensation at all, or maybe it permitted no sensation to reach him.  
  
Then Harry wanted to snort. No sensation except the voice he had just heard, he reminded himself.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said to the man who had appeared outside his bubble. Harry reckoned it was the man who owned the office, since his wards sprang up around him the minute he shut the door. “I don’t mean to cause as much trouble as I have. I just thought it was a better option than letting the Ministry shut down Hogwarts.”  
  
“You should have paid more attention to the papers,” the man murmured, walking over until he stood between Harry’s and Persephone’s bubbles. “It was the Board of Governors who made that decision.”  
  
“Pushed by Tillipop,” Harry retorted, glaring at the man. He definitely wasn’t Tillipop or related to him, the way Harry had thought he might be at first. He wasn’t familiar either, though. This man was tall and had ash-colored hair, hanging loose and ragged around his shoulders as though he had better things to do than cut it. His eyes were blue and calm, but he looked at Harry and slowly shook his head, before walking over and sitting down behind the desk. When he clasped his hands in front of him, Harry could see that his skin was taut and pale. He probably spent a lot of time indoors.  
  
“There are certain things that it simply isn’t diplomatic to say, Mr. Potter,” the man murmured, “no matter how true they are. I’m wondering now if we should have made our move earlier, and offered you a political position the minute you finished Auror training. On the other hand, that might have been a greater headache than it would be worth.”  
  
“I can’t think of a political position you could have offered me that I would have accepted,” said Harry, and leaned back, and folded his arms, and stared hard at the man.  
  
“It would have been different, before the Ministry was your enemy,” said the man. “You know that some people thought of you as dangerous from the time you could walk, yes,” he added, as though to cut off one of the protests Harry could have made. “But they are not the only ones who thought of you, or even the most powerful ones. We discussed ways to make you part of the power structure, since it was obvious that you weren’t simply going away.”  
  
Harry snorted. “There’s nothing you could have offered me that would tempt me,” he repeated.  
  
“A say in the future of Hogwarts, before you knew about the Board of Governors closing it and felt compelled to do something drastic?” The man squinted at him. “A legitimate use for your great power?  _Nothing_?”  
  
“I don’t think you would have because the Ministry never does that kind of thing,” Harry said. “You can talk all you like about different factions. The ones who thought I was dangerous would still have tried to eliminate me.”  
  
“Such lack of trust,” said the man, putting a hand over his heart. “In our ability to protect you if you were one of our own, I mean.”  
  
Harry just stared at him, and said nothing. The man glanced between him and Persephone and rattled some papers on his desk.  
  
“I have no idea who you are,” Harry said at last. “And even less reason to trust you, when you think about it. Why  _should_ I trust someone who shows up out of nowhere and proclaims sadly that I should have trusted him when I never knew about him?”  
  
“I don’t say this to offer you a way out  _now_ ,” said the man, gently and with some emphasis. “It’s gone too far, the conflict between you and the Ministry. And that bird of yours, and the power you wield, and your bond with Hogwarts, make you far too dangerous.” He stood up. “But I do regret some of what we’ve had to do, and I wanted to let you know I would have made it different if I could.”  
  
“That still doesn’t tell me who you are and why I should care,” Harry pointed out.  
  
The man smiled slowly and inclined his head. “I’ve worn several names over the years, you know. It’s always best to keep your enemies off-balance and guessing—and I have to salute you for how many times you’ve managed that in the last few months. But the name I’m known by here is Edgar Gorenson. You could use that, and it would be recognized.”  
  
Harry searched his memory, and found nothing. Well, it was always possible that Gorenson didn’t work in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. In fact, Harry thought he probably would have noticed if the man did. He’d always noticed competence in that Department, it was so rare. “You’re an Unspeakable?”  
  
“I’ve sometimes been associated with that Department.” Gorenson gave him a severe look. “But I told you, I’ve worn several names. I move from place to place, doing what’s needed. You could have been the same, if you had only held off for a little while and given us more time to see whether you were suitable.”  
  
Harry laughed. Gorenson stared at him, looking surprised for the first time since they had started talking. Harry liked that. If he didn’t have his magic or his connection to Hogwarts or his phoenix, at least he would have his capacity to surprise.  
  
“I never would have accepted the position you offered me,” Harry said quietly, shaking his head. “Moving from Department to Department doing the Ministry’s dirty work? Because let’s face it, that’s what you do. Controlling people who wanted to change things? One of my best friends wants to change house-elf slavery. There’s  _no way_ that I would consent to that. You think that just because I’m powerful, I must want power. I don’t.”  
  
“You do, or you would have stopped using your magic when you realized how strong you were,” Gorenson said slowly. “I don’t understand you.”  
  
Harry snorted. “ _That’s_ bloody obvious. But no, you couldn’t tame me and fit me into the nice little confines of the Ministry. I would have blasted you for trying.”  
  
“Then you won’t let us try to fit you into the world in any way now, either?” Gorenson’s eyes were steady. “It has to be death?”  
  
“I don’t think that you can kill me,” Harry said. “So many people have tried and not succeeded, after all.”  
  
“I think that you are rather far from allies here.” Gorenson glanced over to Persephone, still pinned and silent in her blue bubble. Harry had to accept that she was unconscious or Stunned or something similar. He would have seen some movement from her by now if she _could_ move. “Once we figured out that the secret of your immunity to our weapons came from your phoenix, it was easy to remove you as a threat.”  
  
“You think that you can disable her and disable me?” Harry asked, but his heart was pounding, and he thought of the way that the curse cast on Persephone had sent  _him_  into unconsciousness when he was facing the Aurors.  
  
“I know that I can.” Gorenson folded his arms and watched him with patience. “I was rather impatient that no one had theorized it before, but when you move around like I do, you acquire an expertise that makes you invaluable to the people who remain behind. I simply have more experience with more aspects of magical theory than they do.” He leaned in. “And I know what that phoenix is to you.”  
  
“Do tell,” Harry said.  
  
“A familiar in the old sense of the word,” Gorenson said. “Not a trained cat, or an owl who can deliver your post. But an animal bound to you at the level of the soul, so that part of your soul is in it.”  
  
Harry blinked. He hadn’t considered that, but then, he didn’t know much about familiars  _or_ magical theory, and the way that he’d acquired Persephone wasn’t like going to Diagon Alley and buying an animal at the Magical Menagerie.  
  
“You don’t know that,” Harry said. “How can you actually prove that there’s a link between my soul and hers?”  
  
“Not that she has a soul,” said Gorenson. “But that she has a bit of yours, yes.” He leaned against the wall and smiled at Harry. “And if anyone should know about sharing bits of souls, then I’d assume it would be you, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry blinked again, and said nothing. He’d never told anyone about Voldemort’s Horcruxes, but he supposed that people who moved around a lot and studied lots of different subjects could have put it together, the same way that Dumbledore had managed to with enough clues.  
  
“No defense to offer?” Gorenson sighed and stood up. “Perhaps that was why you were able to create her, in fact. Someone whose soul is inherently unstable because he’s been sharing a bit of someone else’s would be able to extend his own soul to a familiar more easily.”  
  
“You’re not going to persuade me to join your side,” Harry said, because he felt that was the point most worth emphasizing in this.  
  
“I know that, now,” said Gorenson. “I was only speculating on what might have passed, before everything turned so difficult to resolve.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head at Harry. “You’ve gone too far, but I wanted to offer you a sort of vision of what could have been. I thought it might make you regret your actions.”  
  
“You’re wrong,” Harry said, and then he launched as hard an assault on the blue bubble containing him as he could, with all his strength, physical and magical.  
  
There was a tremble in the shell of the bubble, and a few sparks fell to the floor. But there was no other change, and although Gorenson retreated a cautious step, he came back up in the next second and looked hard at Harry. “You would have done better if you hadn’t done that,” he said. “These bubbles keep your familiar from reaching you, and they keep your magic the same way.”  
  
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Harry said. “In the meantime, what are you going to do with me? You can hardly murder me without it being all over the news.” He spoke as calmly as he could, trying to keep his mind off both the failure of his efforts and the sweat trickling down his sides and soaking the bubble under him.  
  
“Oh, we want it all over the news,” Gorenson said. “And when the Ministry kills a proclaimed Dark Lord, as we have the right to do under the Dark Lords Act, it’s called execution, not murder.”  
  
“You can’t,” was the only thing Harry could think to say, but he said it anyway. The story couldn’t end like this, he thought. He had become Lord of Hogwarts and created Persephone and become Draco’s lover and welcomed Hermione and other people into his court, and…this was the only thing that his efforts amounted to?  
  
“We can,” said Gorenson, and nodded a little to him, sadly. “I do wish that we didn’t have to, you know. We could have used your strength to do so many things. I wish we had known about it before you found out about the closing of Hogwarts, and then you might have been too busy to do anything when it came time to close the school. Or you might have agreed with us that it was for the best.”  
  
“Why did you think it was for the best?” Harry asked. He was groping for straws, for chances. The only thing he could think of was that, as long as Gorenson was talking to him, he wasn’t making arrangements for Harry’s execution.  
  
 _I can’t die. Too many people are depending on me._  
  
“Because what they taught students was a mess,” Gorenson said. “Did you know that fully three-quarters of the students who left Hogwarts since the war can’t perform basic fourth-year spells competently? Too many of the students were only learning the magic for the exams and then forgetting it again the instant they could. They concentrated only on the NEWTS and OWLS that they needed for their eventual future careers. They need to do more than that. Britain was falling behind in international ways of measuring.”  
  
“I thought it might have had something to do with the opinions expressed about your lot since the war,” Harry muttered. His head hurt with the amount of thinking he was trying to do, to escape this predicament.  
  
“That had something to do with it, too,” said Gorenson levelly. “But closing down the school for long enough to find out the best way to teach different things would have obviated that problem.”  
  
“You’re talking about ending a lot of things I was prepared to give my life for,” Harry snapped. “Forgive me if I appear upset.”  
  
“You can appear upset all you like.” Gorenson looked back and forth between him and Persephone. “But these bubbles restrain your magic, and your familiar. That means that you’d better get used to not having access to either of them anymore.”  
  
 _Persephone!_  
  
Harry reached out along a road he hadn’t known was there, an invisible cord pulled taut between them. Maybe it was what Gorenson had said about Persephone being his familiar that made him do it. He just knew that he wanted her as close to him as she could get, and he wanted to test Gorenson’s assertion about the bubbles and how strong they really were.  
  
The bubble around Persephone turned the color of ice, instead of blue. Gorenson stumbled back with a startled cry. Persephone flexed her wings, and opened her eyes. The bubble shattered.  
  
Harry called to her again, and he thought he was doing it with his mouth this time, as well as his mind and magic, although he couldn’t hear himself over the sheer racket of blood in his temples.  
  
Persephone spun in place in midair for a moment, as though she was going to dance with her tail the way she had in the middle of his office. Then she turned and soared straight out through the wall of the office, the flames from her wings melting the stone and making it drip down. She escaped as easily as though Harry had opened the wall of Hogwarts for her.  
  
That left Harry, panting, alone, and with the feeling that Gorenson was staring at him harder than ever.  
  
“This is why you should never make a pet of a Dark creature,” said Gorenson, his mouth and voice both tight. “She abandoned you. What makes you think that she’ll come back?”  
  
“I don’t know that she will,” Harry said, and shrugged. It would be best if he could hide his rapidly beating heart and his joy from Gorenson’s stare. “She always does the opposite of what I want. She might decide that it’s best for her to get as far away as possible.”  
  
“We can still destroy you without her,” Gorenson said, after a few more seconds of watching Harry.  
  
Harry heard the waver in the back of his voice, and leaned forwards and smiled wickedly. “But you’re not sure, are you? She got away, and she has part of my soul, and you aren’t sure if you can do this or not. It would be like trying to destroy someone who had split his soul into a Horcrux and hidden the Horcrux away.  _Wouldn’t it_?”  
  
“You did not split your soul, precisely,” said Gorenson. “You share it with her.” But his eyes were still dark.  
  
“You don’t really know about these things, with all your knowledge.” Harry shook his head sadly. “You should have thought about it in more detail, before deciding that you knew.”  
  
“But we still have you, and we can restrain your access to your magic,” Gorenson said, finally drawing his wand. “We will make sure that no mistake like you releasing your phoenix happens again.”  
  
The Stunner passed through the blue bubble as if it wasn’t there, and Harry had only enough time to notice that apparently it didn’t keep anyone else’s magic out before he sank back into silence.


	16. A Sense of Drama

Draco spread the paper out in front of him, and snickered at the headline. Rita Skeeter had wasted no time in publicizing exactly the kind of reporter-assassinating conspiracy she believed was out there.   
  
 _MINISTRY TO SLAUGHTER REPORTERS!_  
  
The story itself was a little tamer than the headline suggested, but not by much. Draco read with pleasure the dark speculation about all the assassins out there with lightning curses and portable storms, perhaps with artifacts on loan from the Unspeakables. He had to admit, he wouldn’t be surprised if something like this was actually the truth, although he would disagree with Skeeter about the targets.  
  
“Candidate Malfoy.”  
  
Draco lowered the paper slowly, in case they had guests, although he could only think of two or three people that Rosenthal would have brought this far into the Manor without warning him first. For that matter, he could only think of one person who would have walked through the Floo without warning him or the wards.  
  
But it wasn’t Harry who Rosenthal escorted into the room. It was Persephone, balancing on her extended arm. Persephone wasn’t preening and clucking and crooning in delight at her own evil, either. She was staring straight at Draco, and she took off a second later and flew over to him. Draco took the chance to cast a few Cushioning Charms on his shoulder and the cloth on his arm, the way he would have if he were playing host to a particularly heavy owl with a fondness for sitting on humans.  
  
Persephone landed without lots of funny, fussy gestures, either, and spent some time staring into Draco’s eyes. Draco stared back, lightly breathing. If she reached out to pluck his eyes, he wasn’t actually sure that he could stop her, only sure that he would try.  
  
Persephone finally fluttered her wings, a controlled, delicate motion that reminded Draco of someone rapidly blinking. Purple and black flames lazily uncoiled from her wings, weaving together until Draco was looking at something like a knot of light in front of him. Persephone stuck her beak into it and breathed on it, or perhaps simply commanded it.  
  
It formed into an image of Harry lying in a blue bubble that made Draco hiss. He recognized it from depictions in some of his nastier ancestors’ books. There had been a few Malfoy ancestors who had planned for the necessity of controlling a Dark Lord’s magic and ruling from behind the throne.  
  
This room appeared to be an office in the Ministry, though, and Draco didn’t recognize the man standing in front of Harry. When he began to speak, Draco also didn’t recognize the name he introduced himself by, Edgar Gorenson.  
  
But that didn’t matter, given the plans he was talking about, and the sad look he fixed on Harry. He might be actually sad. Draco didn’t care. It still made what he was planning to do to Harry intolerable.  
  
Draco watched Persephone’s escape from a similar bubble in silence, and clenched his fists. He leaned back in his chair and looked at her. “Of course I’ll do everything in my power to rescue him,” he said calmly. “But can you actually lead me back to the exact room in the Ministry where I can find him, and without the whole Ministry lining up to stop us?”  
  
Persephone shook her neck and smoothed her feathers down as the picture in the flames flared and vanished. Then she gave him a condescending look and launched herself into the air. Draco reached up, wincing, and traced the line that her claws had scored on his shoulder despite all his precautions.  
  
“Where do you think she’s going?” he asked Rosenthal as he watched her fly through one of the fireplaces. When he closed his eyes and concentrated, the wards told him that Persephone was on the edge of the Malfoy grounds, soaring so high that he wondered she hadn’t already passed beyond the perception of the wards, and how in the world she had got to that level in the sky from the fireplace she’d chosen.  
  
Rosenthal started to answer, and then gasped sharply instead. Draco turned around to look, since she was staring out the window and there must be something visible there. She wasn’t keyed enough into the wards to feel someone or something through them.  
  
There was an explosion of purple light in the western sky, which for a moment made Draco absurdly sure that sunset had come early. But it resolved itself into the same bow shape that Persephone had shown him, and then turned over and began to blaze with black at the edges. Draco rose to his feet, closing one hand down on the edge of the desk. Did Persephone intend to destroy him and the Manor because he hadn’t immediately accompanied her to rescue Harry?  
  
 _I was willing to. All I did was ask her a question!_  
  
The purple and the black merged into each other, and then became a shadow-sketch of the same pictures that she had given Draco. Draco watched as Harry lay in that bubble and Gorenson started walking around him and speaking again. His words sounded like thunderclaps, distorted by distance, but Draco had no doubt that Persephone was repeating the same conversation she had already showed him.  
  
Draco frowned slowly, baffled. Did she think displaying Harry’s captivity from a distance was more likely to encourage him?  
  
“I don’t know what Lord Potter was thinking when he created that bird.”  
  
Draco looked at Rosenthal over his shoulder. “I don’t think he was thinking anything much,” he said dryly, “except how to survive the spell that the Ministry had launched at him.”  
  
Rosenthal shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.” Her eyes were still focused on the western sky and the pictures there. Well, Draco didn’t think she’d been close enough to see the first procession of images. “Don’t you see what she’s doing?” Rosenthal added, with one sideways glance at him. “She’s making sure that everyone in bloody Britain sees the way the Ministry has captured Potter.”  
  
Draco felt his mouth fall open. “She can’t  _do_ that,” he said, awed, watching as the purple and black light died. He thought he saw a winged shape flickering its way along through the sky, towards the far end of the grounds, and then away from them altogether. Draco thought she was heading in the direction of Hogwarts. But in the meantime, he was sure she would spread out her displays and tell every wizard she could find, if Rosenthal was right.  
  
 _Well, I hope that she has sense enough to keep it away from the eyes of the Muggles, at least._ Draco did have to grimace, though. He hadn’t thought that Harry had created a bird that would do anything like  _this,_ so maybe she had no sense at all.  
  
“I think she can.” Rosenthal bit her lip and glanced sideways at him. “A good thing, too, as long as we don’t have to call out the Obliviators for this. You know what I’m going to suggest.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “That I not go along on any rescue attempt, because it would just confirm what everyone suspected about our connection.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded.  
  
Draco sighed mournfully. “I suppose that Louis will just have to go.”  
  
“Louis?” Rosenthal looked around as though expecting someone she didn’t know to step out of the wall. “I was unaware that you’d hired someone new.”  
  
By the time she turned back, Draco had finished the complicated wand movements that had become more natural the longer he worked on this glamour. He had mostly worked on it while Rosenthal wasn’t here, true, while waiting for Ministry officials who liked to be fashionably late to show up, or at night when he couldn’t sleep. But he had checked his work in a mirror the last ten times, and he knew what he looked like now: a wizard with curly brown hair and blue eyes.  
  
Rosenthal folded her arms. “Absolutely not.”  
  
“Why not?” Draco paused and added the glamour to his voice. He had practiced that one, too, but not as often, given that he’d been alone most of the time. “You know that a Ministerial candidate can do nothing but talk about how sad this is, and hope that the Ministry obeys law and order. But a wizard like Louis Downe, who doesn’t owe loyalty to anyone but his own undistinguished Muggle family, can join the effort without causing comments.”  
  
“You can’t,” Rosenthal said slowly, “because the chances that someone would notice you were wearing a glamour would be higher in a crowded environment like the Ministry. And you might be captured or killed.”  
  
“I would never let that happen,” Draco said, and turned back to the window. “I’m going to Hogwarts. Once there, I’ll introduce myself to Granger and Weasley and whoever else wants to join me.”  
  
Rosenthal sighed behind him, but at least she didn’t actually try to stop him as Draco threw Floo powder into the fire.  
  
*  
  
Harry lay with his face pressed down against what felt like yet another bubble, trying to breathe slowly and carefully and not show that he was awake. He could hear noises of bustle and voices in the distance, but as of yet, he didn’t know what was going on.  
  
He didn’t even know where he was, in Gorenson’s office or elsewhere in the Ministry. And he didn’t know where Persephone was.  
  
He tried to discover what he could without opening his eyes. Beyond the noises of bustle was the sound of running water, and a steady noise, too, not like the sporadic sounds that would come from a Muggle faucet or the casting of an  _Aguamenti_ charm. He could smell something that might be stone or dust. Either way, he thought he was most likely in the Department of Mysteries. They had the resources to have him in an indoor place that still had water flowing through it. Ron had made a casual comment once, when he had had a chance to work with Unspeakables, that no one knew how many caves and other hidden places in Britain had been taken over by the Department of Mysteries.  
  
“He’s awake. We have to make a decision now.”  
  
Harry turned over and opened his eyes. Standing in front of him was Gorenson, frowning at him and shaking his head as though Harry had done what he had to make a lot of trouble for him personally.  
  
“You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?” he snapped, when his eyes fell on Harry’s inquiring ones. “You just  _had_ to be involved. You had to keep pushing, even when we told you clearly that we didn’t want you.”  
  
“I don’t have the least idea what you mean,” Harry said, politely enough, and sat up in the bubble. Several wands at once swung out to cover him. He reminded himself to move slowly. Not that it mattered much how he moved when he didn’t have access to his magic. “Before, you were telling me that you wanted to have me on your side and that my familiar shared pared of my soul. None of that has anything to do with me leaving things alone.” He stretched his arms with an easy show of confidence. He still found it hard to believe that he was captive and might die here.  
  
 _I’m not going to, if I have anything to say about it._  
  
“Why did you tell him that much?” asked someone in Unspeakable robes beside Gorenson. “He would have been easier to control without access to that knowledge.” They leaned towards Gorenson and stage-whispered, in a way that Harry thought he and several other people were meant to hear. “Sometimes I wonder whether we made the best choice when we brought you on board, Edgar.”  
  
That caused some anticipatory snickering. Gorenson lifted his head, streaks of color running away from his flaring nostrils.  
  
“I told him what I thought was necessary for him to know,” he retorted. “We want him to make an  _informed_ choice, do we not?”  
  
The person in Unspeakable robes—Harry still wasn’t sure whether it was a man or a woman—shook their head dismissively and turned back to Harry. “I do wish that things could have been different,” they told him, gently. “We could have used your power for so much good. But you’ve gone too far now. Gorenson is right about one thing. You couldn’t leave the Ministry’s authority well enough alone.” The Unspeakable tapped their wand sharply against their arm, and the bubble containing Harry rose into the air and floated towards what looked like a pool of deep and glowing light set in the middle of the floor. “You’ll have to pay the price the way so many others did.”  
  
“You should be more worried about what’s going to happen when you dissolve this bubble,” Harry said. “Or when my familiar returns.”  
  
The Unspeakable paused and tilted back towards him. “You can’t be sure that she’ll ever return, that she didn’t just flee. That was what we thought you would direct what is essentially your own Horcrux to do.”  
  
Harry sat up and leaned forwards with an intense expression. He thought his life, or his magic, or his sanity, one of those, might depend on how well he talked at the moment, how much he could make them believe he was hiding. “I never directed her to do anything like this. I didn’t know that she was my familiar in the way that Gorenson told me she was.” He shook his head and let wonder creep into his expression. The best thing about this tactic of trying to delay his immersion in the pool of light was that it was nothing but the truth. He  _hadn’t_ known that Persephone was anything more than a Transfigured spell. “I don’t know what she’ll do any more than you do.”  
  
The Unspeakable started to answer, but someone said something across the pool of light, and then turned around and listened. Harry scowled. The transparent sides of the bubble had shimmered and suddenly become tight and soundproof just when it would have benefited him the most to hear.  
  
There was a slowness to the Unspeakable’s movements when they turned around again that made Harry catch his breath. Some bad news, then, and at the moment, he didn’t know whether bad news for the Unspeakable was also bad news for him or not.  
  
The bubble thinned, and suddenly Harry could hear voices from the outside again. “What did you command your phoenix to do?” whispered the Unspeakable. “To spread the word of your imprisonment, or something else?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I  _told_ you. I was as arrogant as you thought I was, more arrogant than I should have been. I didn’t ever expect that I would be captured like this.” He glanced over his shoulder at Gorenson, but he appeared to be as much taken aback as Harry was.  
  
A jolt spread through Harry, shocking him more than he wanted to admit. He turned hastily back to the Unspeakable, who still had their wand raised and aiming straight at him. Apparently they wanted Harry to have no doubt that they were the source of that shock.  
  
“You made the phoenix,” said the Unspeakable. “You command her. You will tell us what is in her head.”  
  
Harry began to laugh, and carried it past the point where he would have stopped. It was satisfying, to have the Unspeakables standing around staring at him with wide eyes and no idea what to do.  
  
Another shock shut him up. Harry wiped at his mouth and leaned back in the bubble, aware that he was the center of attention and that they hadn’t dipped him in their magic pool of light yet. That had to be a good thing.  
  
“I don’t have control over her,” he told the hooded Unspeakable who had shocked him quietly. “She does what I don’t want her to do, half the time. Sometimes I’ve tried to trick her by pretending that I want a certain thing and getting her to do the opposite, which is what I really want, but she’s on to me. She can’t be fooled by fake indifference or laughter.”  _Unlike you lot._ “She does what she wants to. Besides, you have me here, in a bubble that shuts off my magic. How am I supposed to control her from this distance, even if I could?”  
  
The Unspeakable turned around to the others, as though thinking they might have more advice. Harry waited, his arms locked together behind his head. His eyes were narrowed, his face full of contempt, but he was waiting for something specific.  
  
If he saw it, then he would exert himself.  
  
“We cannot be sure that you are telling the truth,” his friend said, and turned back towards him. “We should proceed with the plan, and raise the wards as if we really have a mob coming after us.”  
  
The other Unspeakables nodded and murmured, and a few of them stepped up beside the bubble to help move it towards the pool. Harry calculated their numbers and the glow of that pool and how much he  _didn’t_ want to find out what it was, and decided that he would never have a better chance.  
  
And the sides of the bubble had dimmed a bit, changed a bit, as they moved it.  
  
He lashed one arm out, going straight through the bubble as if it wasn’t there. Maybe it was because they were moving it that they had changed their defenses, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they had changed their defenses, and so his hand was through it and on the wand of the woman walking beside him, and he yanked hard on it and felt the surge of magic up his arm that he had got that time he stole Draco’s hawthorn wand.  
  
She shrieked and resisted him, and a ringing clang up his bones made Harry grit his teeth. Conquering her wand wouldn’t be nearly as easy as conquering Draco’s, that was for certain.  
  
But he still had his wand hand outside the bubble, and they hadn’t changed the sides again, maybe because they didn’t want to cut his arm off. Harry pulled on the wand again, and it came free.  
  
And he unleashed his magic as hard as he could, through the wand this time, weakening the bubble and caroming it over towards a wall that he hoped might break it open. He curled up the way he would if he was falling off a broom, and waited.  
  
 _This is crazy._  
  
 _Well, so is most of what’s happened to me in the last day._  
  
And then there was the literally shattering impact of the bubble against the wall, and Harry bounced to his feet, wand in hand. There was a moment of breathless silence.  
  
Then the Unspeakables descended on him.


	17. Demonstrations of Power

The hooded Unspeakable who had been doing most of the talking was the first one to attack. Harry cast a Wind Charm so that the hood flopped back and he could finally see who he was dealing with.  
  
A heavy-jawed man, no one he knew. Harry snarled and struck as hard as he could anyway, although he still had to channel his magic through the stolen wand. It was probably because most of his magic was bound up in Hogwarts, but he couldn’t simply flail around with his wandless power and destroy them that way.  
  
But he hadn’t been a trained Auror for nothing, and the spell crashed into the man and carried him off his feet, knocking him into the other Unspeakables piling up behind him. Harry deflected a curse coming in from the side with a Shield Charm and moved forwards, stepping over an outflung hand.  
  
“That was stupid of you,” Harry told the man quietly, and then cast another spell, this one a blast of wind that made other people’s hoods fly back and filled the room with little whimpers, as they twitched away from him as best they could.  
  
It did more than that to the head Unspeakable. It lifted him from the floor and pitched him straight into the middle of the pool of light that he had been so intent on leading Harry into.   
  
There was a scream that cut off as though there were now Silencing Charms around the pool. Harry kicked someone trying to stand up and stab him with their wand in the ribs, and moved silently up to the edge of the pool, staring into it.  
  
The light bubbled and foamed, and tiny little fountains and geysers of silver rose and danced on the surface. The man was completely submerged, his hands flailing out and his mouth opening in soundless screams. Despite the fountains, Harry could still see that much of him beneath the surface.  
  
The man’s limbs gradually sank. The light stopped leaping up and calmed down. Harry watched as the silver settled around the man’s limbs, sizzling, and there was an angry buzzing noise, as though someone had released a whole battalion of bees.  
  
The buzzing died away, and Harry realized that he was looking at a silver statue, resting in the pool as though it had been placed there like an offering.  
  
Harry cast a spell that would cover the mouth of the pool and prevent him from accidentally stumbling into it, then turned around and stared at the Unspeakables. Maybe it was just the way that his gaze fell on them, or seeing one of their own suffer the fate they had planned for Harry, but they backed away from him, some of them shaking their heads as though his eyes had hurt them.  
  
“This is what you were going to do to me,” Harry said softly. “No doubt to keep me until you could call for me, preserved and held harmless.” He felt his muscles trembling, and wondered absently if it was due to stress as he took a long stride forwards. “You were going to do this to me, and  _keep_ doing this to me.”  
  
Someone began talking in a feeble voice, but Harry didn’t listen to them. He still didn’t have access to some of his magic, but he was beginning to think that rage could make up for that.  
  
“ _Aguamenti_ ,” he said, his voice so flat that it felt slippery in his own mouth.  
  
He saw a few smiles, as if they thought the spell was harmless. And that was what they went on thinking, right up until the point that water cascaded down in enormous cataracts from the ceiling and began to fill up the room where they were standing. Harry cast a nonverbal _Expelliarmus_  at the same time, Disarming everybody with long sweeps of his stolen wand.  
  
He created a platform beneath him that would float and sealed the doors. Then he stood on his platform, which bounced higher and higher with the surge of the water, and watched in mild interest as they tried to swim.  
  
His magic was roaring in him.  _They were going to turn me into a statue. They were going to stand me in a corner, and they would have kept me as a prisoner like that forever._  
  
It was possible that not even Persephone could have found him, if they had done that. She had a connection to his soul, but did a statue have a soul? Did someone made of silver have a mind and magic that she could connect to and find her way back to?  
  
“Potter…Potter, please…”  
  
One of the furiously splashing Unspeakables was babbling at him. Harry thought they had been for a while, but this one he noticed more because he was treading water right next to Harry’s platform. Harry looked down at him. The water was rising so rapidly that soon it would reach the ceiling, and then the Unspeakables wouldn’t have any more room to breathe. Harry could easily create a little bubble for himself that would give him air, but none of them would be able to enter it.  
  
“What?” he asked.  
  
“I have a daughter,” the Unspeakable wheezed. With his grey robe bedraggled and clutching at his limbs, he looked like an ordinary wizard, not someone who had been about to do something horrible to Harry. “Please. Don’t let me die like this. I want to see her again, I want to be with her…”  
  
Harry shook his head and raised his wand. “Someone has asked me to spare his life,” he called out, and saw heads swiveling all over the room, at least where people had the ability to pay attention to him instead of struggling to swim.  
  
“I think that I’m going to do it,” Harry added, and cast a few spells to protect the platform he stood on, then cast the one that would unseal the doors.  
  
The water flooded out, bounding joyously, into the rest of the Department of Mysteries, where the Unspeakables had stored all sorts of dangerous and illegal magical artifacts and the documents that talked about them.  
  
Harry ducked down low and rode the board as it leaped through the low doorway and out into the middle of the corridor that stretched beyond that. The current of the water was mostly forwards, certainly on the cresting wave he rode, although he could see some of the torrents running into different rooms. He heard glass breaking, wood splintering, paper tearing. He laughed.  
  
He had to cast a few hasty spells to keep himself from slamming into walls, but that didn’t matter; it just meant he could continue moving, and when he got to the end, he was tossed out on the floor of a large room that seemed to hold nothing but a pile of gleaming eggs, enclosed behind a sparkling wall of wards. Harry didn’t break the wards, on the theory that there had been enough destruction already, and the eggs might hatch something dangerous if the wards had managed to repel the cascade of water.  
  
Harry looked around and spotted a few washed-up Unspeakables crawling on the floor and coughing. Harry stepped up to the nearest. She froze and stared up at him. Harry didn’t know her, but she had a commanding height and ash-blond hair that he thought ought to make it easy to remember her. Maybe she had high rank and would be listened to, as well.  
  
He would have sought out someone with higher rank, but he didn’t want to take the time.  
  
“Inform them that if they attempt to take me from Hogwarts again, they will be dealing with worse than the destruction I’ve caused here,” he said pleasantly, and watched as her head bobbed fearfully. Then he turned and strode out of the room with the eggs, in the direction of the entrance to the Department of Mysteries.  
  
His wandless magic returned with a sudden snap the minute he got into a broad corridor that had a staircase at the end. Harry paused, then smiled. He supposed that it was reassuring to know that his enemies could only block his magic by wards on specific rooms, instead of simply being able to do it at will.  
  
“Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry turned around. Gorenson wasn’t far away from him, leaning against a doorway that led into a room with a cold, quiet noise of running water trickling out of it. Harry held out a hand and conjured his own blue bubble on it, rapidly growing.  
  
“I won’t come near you,” Gorenson said. “I simply wanted to let you know that  _I_ won’t give up, no matter how much fear and property damage you caused today.”  
  
He bowed his head and disappeared back into the room beyond him. Harry slowly let the blue bubble lapse, and cocked his head.  
  
Then he reached out and began to rend the wards apart that blocked Apparition. He was sick of this place.  
  
*  
  
“Why should we trust you?”  
  
Draco hissed between his teeth. He hadn’t anticipated this being so hard. He had intended to come to Weasley and Granger and tell them what had happened to Harry, revealing his identity. They already knew that he was involved with Harry, and disapprove as she might, Granger would follow him to war before Persephone could get this far north, he thought.  
  
Or so he  _had_  thought, until he ran into this opposition. It seemed that Granger was distrustful of his glamour, and Weasley stood back, frowning, not ready to commit to either side yet until he’d had more time to think about it.  
  
“Because I’m telling the truth,” Draco said. He touched his wand to his temple, and then looked around the office. He’d been sure that Harry had a Pensieve, but he didn’t see it anywhere around here. “Do you need to look at my memories? Because that can be arranged, if you have a Pensieve.”  
  
Granger squinted at him harder than usual.  
  
Exasperated, Draco turned and hauled hard at Harry’s desk, looking for the Pensieve behind it. There was no revelation there, so he cast the Summoning Charm, and waited for the bloody thing to fly to him.  
  
Before it could get there, Briseis opened the door and stepped into the office. “We have a problem.” Her eyes passed over Draco without any curiosity. Draco wouldn’t put it past her to already know about his disguise, maybe because Rosenthal had contacted her.  
  
“I know,” said Weasley. “Harry went out to fight those Aurors, and he didn’t come back.” At least he believed part of Draco’s story, Draco thought, his stomach churning. But in the meantime, anything could be happening to Harry, including his death or the loss of his magic, and they were just  _standing_ here.  
  
“I was referring to the demands,” said Briseis, and held out the parchment in her hands, so that Draco could make out the flowing scroll of letters at the top of it. It bore the Ministry seal at the bottom, and the letters were done in purple ink, more than large enough to be read at a distance.  
  
SURRENDER OF DARK LORD HARRY POTTER AND HIS COURT  
  
Draco caught his breath. He ought to have known the Ministry wouldn’t be satisfied with simply killing Harry. They would want anyone who had associated with him, and thus become outlaws, to show they were submitting to the Ministry.  
  
“They want us all to come to the Ministry by noon tomorrow,” said Briseis grimly. “There are at least a hundred copies of this floating around Hogwarts now, rained down from the air by Ministry owls.” She turned the parchment around as if she needed to check the wording and make sure of what it really said. “There are people who will be panicking and who think that we ought to surrender, I’m afraid. It’s inevitable.”  
  
Draco ground his teeth. “We could  _go after_ Harry and free him,” he began.  
  
Briseis stared at him. “Why do you call him by his first name?”  
  
She must not know who he was after all. Draco opened his mouth to explain, yet again.  
  
The Pensieve came barreling through the door then; Harry must have stored it quite a distance away. At the same time, the sky over the Forbidden Forest lit up with purple radiance. Persephone had arrived.  
  
Weasley and Granger ran to the window to look out. Briseis didn’t bother. Apparently the parchment demanding the court’s surrender was enough for her. She  _did_ look bleakly at Draco. “I’m still waiting for an answer to my question.”  
  
From the expression on her face, Draco knew why. She was hoping against hope that he might be someone with a solution to the problem.  
  
Draco dropped the Pensieve to ring on Harry’s desk. It would be useless to show his memories now that Persephone was showing hers. “I’m Candidate Malfoy under a disguise, and I want to know if we’re going to rescue Harry or not.”  
  
“He’s in the Ministry?”  
  
Draco nodded. He didn’t know if she was making a good guess or if she had seen Persephone’s little light show, and he didn’t  _care._ “The Aurors took him there. Someone talked to him about how they were going to kill him and they were holding him in a bubble that prevented him from using his magic. Maybe he couldn’t even use all of his magic, since so much of it is bound up in Hogwarts. Either way, Persephone escaped, and came to help find help for him. Can we  _go_ , now?”  
  
Briseis was frowning, but she put down that stupid parchment the Ministry had sent about the surrender of the court and nodded. “We should. I know a few passages into the Ministry that aren’t exactly secret, but they’re not common knowledge, either. I think we can get into it quickly.” She raised her voice. “Are you coming with us, Granger, Weasley?”  
  
They turned around from the window. Weasley’s face was tight and pale. Granger was frowning, with a scowl so ferocious that Draco raised his eyebrows.  
  
“We need to go get him,” said Granger decisively. “They had  _no right_ to do that.”  
  
Draco blinked, then shrugged. If she needed to see Harry as a victim in order to go help him, that wasn’t really Draco’s problem. What mattered was that they could get moving. “Fine. We should get to one of your Ministry entrances, then.” He turned to Briseis.  
  
Persephone abruptly burst in through the window. Draco ducked, even as part of him noted that at least he wasn’t the only person whose windows she went around shattering.  
  
Persephone looped around in front of them, crooning. She spread her wings and flicked her tail up and down, and then dived down and stood on the floor in front of Draco. Draco stared. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her do that before, only fly and perch on someone’s shoulder or on the special perch that Harry had created for her.  
  
Persephone glanced up at him, head cocked winsomely. Black and purple flames were shimmering into being around her shoulders, and Draco wondered if she was going to show them another vision.  
  
Then Persephone took off again and flew around his head, trilling and crooning. Her voice modulated past the point where Draco would have expected to hear her normal squawks, and then into pure and perfect phoenix song, ringing with bells and darker, shimmering tones that Draco hadn’t heard before.  
  
“I didn’t know she could sing like that,” Granger breathed.  
  
“Neither did I.” Briseis was staring up at Persephone with wide eyes. “I don’t think she would sing like that unless some destruction had happened, or unless someone had died, or…” She trailed off, and rushed over to the window in turn.  
  
Draco went with her, although by now he thought he already knew what he would see.   
  
Harry was striding towards the front gates. Draco thought he could simply have appeared inside Hogwarts, if he wanted, but perhaps he was worried about disrupting the wards if he did.  
  
Or perhaps he wanted to make a dramatic entrance for anyone watching. People were crowding out of Hogsmeade to do that.  
  
Persephone sang one more time, and then a flicker of fire reached out from her tail like a whip and coiled around Draco. Before he could do more than gasp, they were flying through space. Draco saw the square of the broken window looming ahead of him, vast but too small for him to pass through without injury, and shut his eyes.  
  
But no glass touched him, and because he had his eyes closed, he never  _did_ get to see how Persephone did it. Instead, he felt a cool passage through the air, and by the time he looked again, Persephone was setting him down on the ground in front of Harry. Then she perched on the grass between them and stared expectantly back and forth.  
  
Harry stared at him, his mouth gaping. “Who…” he breathed.  
  
Draco remembered he still wore the glamour. Which meant that he could do what the impulse of his pounding heart and his tightening throat told him to do, instead of what was political or practical.  
  
He reached up, cradling Harry’s face in his hands, and swallowed his mouth in a kiss.  
  
Harry caught on fast, because he stopped the little movement of resistance and grabbed Draco’s shoulders, almost bending him backwards with the force of his response.  
  
Overhead now, beyond the sound of their meeting tongues and Harry’s soft moans and the murmurs of the crowd, Persephone went on singing.


	18. The Seen Danger

“Gorenson was what you saw in this picture.”  
  
Once again, the picture that Briseis had said she felt the strange, vague warning around was in front of him. Harry tapped the figure of Gorenson, who stood in the background, behind Tillipop. There had been no reason to pay him any attention at the time, but now Harry wanted to shake his head at his own ignorance. Of course he should have realized that an unknown man who appeared next to the Minister in a position of such importance was someone he would have to watch.  
  
“Yes, my lord,” Briseis agreed, leaning over to study the photo again. She cast a little glance at Harry as she moved, and Harry had to smile at the brightness and relief shining in her eyes. “If he was the one who kidnapped you, the one Persephone showed everyone, then he has much to answer for.”  
  
“It’ll be difficult to make him answer for it.” Harry stood up and paced slowly around his office, his hands clasped behind his back. Persephone sat on her perch and watched him with bright eyes.  
  
Harry cast her a cautious glance. Ever since he had won his own release from Ministry captivity, she had puzzled him. She no longer seemed to do everything he didn’t want her to do simply to be contrary. She no longer often flew into the Forbidden Forest to kill small animals. She watched him with eager curiosity, instead, and flew around singing whenever he and Draco were together.  
  
That was embarrassing, but at least few people knew who Draco really was. The public at large only knew that Harry had a lover—Draco under a glamour, beneath his name of Louis Downe—whom he had kissed in public.  
  
The papers were going mad, of course. Harry had paid little attention to them. Easing himself back into the charge of Hogwarts, reassuring his court, and telling Briseis and the others the truth about Gorenson and how they were going to repay him had occupied his time.  
  
And worrying about Persephone, he had to admit.   
  
He stepped up to her now and offered a finger. She didn’t watch it as though it was a tasty treat. She ducked her head and curled her neck, as if offering it to him to pet.  
  
Harry stepped back, wise to that particular trick. Persephone hooted sadly and cocked her head to the side, watching him as if she could make him tell her why he had retreated. Harry shook his head at her.  
  
“What’s wrong with you?” he murmured. “You were supposed to bite me just then, not sound as if you wanted reassurance.”  
  
He could almost hear Briseis opening and then closing her mouth behind him. She knew as well as anyone that he wasn’t mad, and if he wanted to speak to his phoenix, she might be thinking, then let him.  
  
Persephone spread her wings so that they drooped and held her body parallel to the perch, inching forwards. Harry moved closer again. Maybe she would bite him this time, and his concern would be relieved.  
  
Instead, though, she gave what sounded like a little croon of distress, and bent her head so urgently that Harry gave in and began to pet her feathers. He reckoned he could always snatch his hand back in a second.  
  
She didn’t try to bite him. Instead, she closed her eyes in what looked like ecstasy and cocked her head even further down, getting his fingers to scrape into the recesses of what seemed like tough-to-reach black and purple feathers. The noise she made was unusually deep for a bird, and she almost toppled off the perch crowding close to him.  
  
“My Lord?” Briseis’s voice was full of wonder, perhaps fear.  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry answered truthfully. “I’ve been seeing this change in her since I came back. I wondered if Gorenson could influence her from a distance.”  
  
“I can research that, my Lord.” From the sound of it, Briseis was making a little note on parchment. But that didn’t take Harry’s eyes away from the bird in front of him, or how Persephone was swaying back and forth now, wings out in what seemed like a last effort to keep her balance. Her voice was soft and restless, rising in a little whistle that trailed off at the end. It was a sound that Harry had heard a normal phoenix make a few times, but never her.  
  
“Please do,” Harry said. “I know there won’t be much available on her, because she’s unique, but even phenomena that are similar to her would help me.” He cast his mind around in circles, trying to come up with something that would have done this to Persephone without external influence, but each time, he had to shake his head again.   
  
Persephone opened one eye and looked up at him in a peeved manner. Harry caught his breath, but she just shut it and returned to stillness and complacency the instant he started tickling her neck again.  
  
“If she’s part of your soul, my Lord,” Briseis said, voice hesitant, “could you tell if she was being influenced?”  
  
“I don’t know enough about her,” Harry said quietly. He took his hand back quickly when Persephone began to twist her beak towards his fingers, but Persephone only straightened the rest of the way, gave him a steady look that seemed to express her disappointment, and then took off, flowing towards the far window. In a flick of her wings, she was out of the office, vanishing into the depths of the sky. Harry tried to take some comfort from that, since she had disappeared to hunt so often before, but it was hard.  
  
He was certain now that the danger Briseis sensed had come from Gorenson. And Gorenson knew that there was a connection between his and Persephone’s souls, although he had been wrong about how much control Harry had over her.  
  
How much was it possible to do to someone’s phoenix-familiar from a distance?  
  
*  
  
“I want to know if I should counteract these rumors.”  
  
Draco had to roll his eyes. “I thought you would be  _thrilled_ at these rumors,” he said, picking up the paper from the top of the pile. Rosenthal had been saving and collecting them, evidently feeling that it would be best if they had all the photographs of Harry kissing him in his glamour available at a moment’s notice.  
  
Looking at the photograph that showed Harry tilting Draco’s head further and further back until his tongue apparently tried to crawl down Draco’s throat, and his hands gripping Draco’s neck and shoulders, while Persephone sang overhead, had been amusing at first. Then it had filled Draco with complex emotions that had taken some time to smolder and die. Then it had made him swing back around to semi-hysterical laughter.  
  
“You wanted me disassociated from Harry,” he repeated, when he looked up and found Rosenthal staring at him. “I  _know_ you did. Why are you so distressed about this happening now?” He laid the paper flat on the table and smoothed it out. He thought the pictured Harry winked at him for a second.  
  
“There were rumors that you were close to Lord Potter,” said Rosenthal, watching her notes instead of him. “I think some people believed you were his lover, based on the initial interview Skeeter printed. And now they want to know who Louis Downe is, and what you know about him.”  
  
Draco waved his hand. “That’s easy enough. He’s a distant relative who’s spent most of his life moving around the world. Disreputable, you know. We suspect his mother was Muggleborn. If Lord Potter has taken a liking to him, well, we won’t say too much about him. We think that he might be encouraging Lord Potter in some of his wilder behavior.”  
  
“Wilder?” Rosenthal looked up.  
  
“Offering sanctuary to werewolves, and the like.”  
  
“Ah.” Rosenthal had a faint smile on her face as she turned back to the notes. “I did wonder if your political instincts were ever going to return.”  
  
Draco controlled his childish urge to stick his tongue out at her back, which was definitely not a political instinct, and glanced at the paper again. He wondered what people would say when no Louis Downe appeared in public at Harry’s side, and then grinned.  
  
 _I might just have to assume the glamour and appear with him, to put any rumors about the legitimacy of our relationship to rest._  
  
“Has there been any progress on identifying the Unspeakable who tried to assassinate me?” he asked, forcibly putting the more intriguing matter from his mind, and turning back to Rosenthal as she shifted from one pile of notes to the other.  
  
“Not the person,” Rosenthal said, but with a quiet satisfaction in her voice that warned Draco she did have some good news. “I believe I have identified the artifact that permitted him entrance to the wards, though.”  
  
“Oh?” Draco leaned forwards. Rosenthal had an expertise in research among her other talents, but then, she had worked for the Ministry before him, and had had access to all sorts of confidential records. Maybe even some of the Unspeakables’ documents.  
  
Rosenthal nodded and took a piece of parchment from her pocket, holding it out to him. Draco squinted at it in confusion. It looked like a photograph, but nothing in the picture was moving, even dust. It was just a picture of a flat grey box with small legs, the sort of thing that Draco’s mother might have kept her jewelry in if she had had no taste.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Is it some kind of Muggle picture?”  
  
“Exactly,” said Rosenthal. Draco kept his eyes on the photograph so he wouldn’t preen at the surprise in her voice. “The artifact was one last seen in the Muggle world. The Ministry obtained this picture of it, but the person who took it had to use a Muggle camera instead of a wizarding one. The chance that he would be caught was too great. By the time the Ministry went to retrieve the artifact, it was gone.”  
  
“It doesn’t seem like anything large,” Draco said, to lure her into talking. He knew well enough that something didn’t have to be large to cause trouble.  
  
“I know. But it has caused its fair share.” Rosenthal frowned. “Perhaps I should say artifacts like it have. There’s no indication that it’s unique.”  
  
“Will you tell me what it is?” Draco put the photograph down on the table beside him. He thought he had learned all he could by staring at it.   
  
Maybe deciding that the exasperation in his voice was enough reward for teasing him, Rosenthal nodded. “It’s a box that can collapse all defensive magic in a given area. That includes wards, Shield Charms, and the like.” She added, before Draco could open his mouth to demand why the assassin hadn’t caused greater destruction, “But there’s a limitation on it, perhaps introduced by whoever made it. I suspect it was made for mischief, myself. If it is used to collapse wards, it can be used to take down more wards, but not to do anything _else_ , until an hour has passed. So the Unspeakable who sneaked past your wards would have been unable to defeat a Shield Charm, except with his own natural magic.”  
  
“Hmmm.” Draco leaned back against his desk. “It was probably made by a Light wizard. They’re the only sort who would think that limitations on something as powerful as that were a good idea.”  
  
“Perhaps you should be thanking that ancient wizard, whoever it was, for the limitation, or you would be dead.”  
  
Draco waved his hand carelessly. “Something would have come up to ensure that I survived.” He went on before Rosenthal could argue. “But it does mean that whoever used it would have to have at least some Light magic, not be so steeped in the Dark Arts that his body rejected Light magic on principle.”  
  
Rosenthal sighed at the ceiling. “Those tales of being that steeped in Dark Arts aren’t true. Dark wizards use Light artifacts and spells all the time.”  
  
Draco looked her in the eye. “You never lived with the Dark Lord.”  
  
There was a pause when Rosenthal seemed to be trying to decide how to take that, and then she nodded. “Fair enough,” she said. “Let’s say that rare Dark wizards become so corrupted that they can’t use Light magic anymore. But that’s not the case for most people. So that still leaves us a wide field to search.”  
  
“Perhaps not that wide. What do you think about Gorenson, the man who captured Harry?”  
  
Rosenthal shook her head. “He was capturing him at the same time that he supposedly appeared here to assassinate you.”  
  
“I don’t think he was with the Aurors who actually went to Hogwarts to capture Harry. He’s not a trained Auror.”  
  
“Then he’s probably not a trained Unspeakable, either.”  
  
“We should write a letter, and ask Harry what he said,” Draco said. He watched Rosenthal note that down, and added, “I just find it odd that we have some assaults that are actually well-organized, two of them, out of a Ministry that up until now has been incompetent. It wouldn’t surprise me if the same planner was behind them.”  
  
“Why didn’t they assign Gorenson to do something about you before now?” Rosenthal frowned at the list of notes she had as if the answer would leap out at her if she looked for it long enough. “It seems even stranger that they would just leave it up in the air and let you and Lord Potter get away with as much as you did before they tried to clamp down.”  
  
Draco grunted and closed his eyes, trying to recall his memories of the conversation between Harry and Gorenson that Persephone had showed him. “He said that he drifted around from place to place, I think. From Department to Department of the Ministry. Maybe they had him working on something else, and then he finally saw the mess we were making, and decided to take care of us.”  
  
“Make up your mind,” Rosenthal said dryly. “He was an Auror, he was an Unspeakable, you can’t remember what he said he was, you do remember. He was assigned somewhere, he made the independent decision.” But when Draco opened his eyes, she was writing down what he had said on her list.  
  
“I think that we need to take him seriously,” Draco said. He knew it was wishful thinking, but the more he concentrated on it, the more he thought that he could picture the Unspeakable who had attacked him from the roof as being Gorenson’s height and size. He wasn’t very different, at least, Draco did know that. The memory Persephone had shown him had been good at picturing relative sizes. “In fact, I’d like you to devote most of your effort for the next few days to that. Find out who he is, where he comes from. You never ran into him when you worked in the Ministry?”  
  
“I also remember him saying that he moved around from place to place, and that he took different names when he did so.” Rosenthal looked a little disgusted, as if there were some tactics too political even for her. “So I could have worked with him and might not even have known it, if it was under a different persona.”  
  
Draco almost asked her if he had looked familiar, but restrained himself. Rosenthal was competent enough to have informed him of that immediately, if she did notice something she knew. “Well. Do what you can for the next—three days. That’s when my next interview with Skeeter is set up.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded and left the room. She had the confident stride of someone who knew exactly what she should be doing and no doubt of her ability to do it, Draco thought.  
  
He wished he could have the same confidence. He roamed in circles in front of the fireplace, stroking his arms.  
  
Harry had told him about Briseis’s supposed ability to sense danger, after their lovemaking at Hogwarts after his return. Harry’s voice had been soft and sated and sleepy, and his hand wandering up and down Draco’s arm as he talked, and Draco thought that his mind had wandered the same way, without paying much attention to what he was telling Draco.  
  
“I think the danger must have been Gorenson,” Harry had said, right before he drifted off to sleep. “He seemed to know more about Persephone than anyone else I’ve met so far. And it’s true that he was more competent at doing damage to me.” He’d rolled over on the bed and smiled at Draco. “And now that we know who he is, we can keep an eye on him, and stop him before he tries anything else…”  
  
Draco had waited for more, but Harry had fallen asleep then, sliding it into the way Rosenthal had strode out of the room.  
  
Draco couldn’t name, even to himself, the reason for the jittery fear that flooded him and made him spell the fire to leap up. He couldn’t find the logic in the fear he felt of Gorenson, far more than he ever had for Tillipop even when Tillipop seemed a serious challenger to his election to Minister.  
  
But the fear was there, and, accompanying it, the fear that Briseis’s ability hadn’t seen the half of it.


	19. Dances with Werewolves

  
“Harry!”  
  
The shout jerked Harry out of a sound sleep, and he sat up, rubbing his eyes. For a second he thought Persephone had escaped his control and resumed her marauding ways, but she was starting to life on the perch beside his bed, flapping her wings and looking nearly as shocked as he was by the noise. Harry shook his head at her, silently promising mayhem but relieved if this was something she had done—it would mean she had gone back to normal—and stood up, reaching for his dressing robe.  
  
“Coming, Hermione!” he called again, while her pounding on the door grew more frantic.  
  
It still took him a few more minutes to get dressed and make sure that Persephone had really gone back to sleep, head beneath her wing, instead of trying to join in the excitement, and then poke Persephone in the back with one finger. When she reacted only with a sleepy chirp, Harry went to the door, shaking his head. Yes, something was wrong, but so far, he had found no sign of the actual means of control that Gorenson was exerting over her.  
  
Hermione was pacing up and down in the corridor by the time Harry got the door open. He expected her to be at least a little embarrassed by his rumpled hair and dressing robe, but she grabbed his arm and towed him down the corridor towards the stairs without seeming to notice at all.  
  
“Wait a minute,” Harry complained, stumbling, and glad that there was no one around to grin at him and find this amusing, the Dark Lord of Hogwarts being manhandled by his friend. “What is this about?”  
  
“It’s the full moon,” Hermione said. “And Ombershade refused his Wolfsbane.”  
  
Harry hissed between his teeth and immediately quickened his pace. Ombershade was Greenbush’s partner in the werewolf Order, but Harry had never thought he was the brains behind it. On the other hand, that might easily lead to him doing something stupider than Greenbush would do.  
  
“Did he tell you why?” he asked, scanning the stones of Hogwarts. A golden clock popped out of them, telling him that it wasn’t yet full moonrise. He had thought it was much later than that, but then, he’d gone to bed early, exhausted by reassuring people in Hogwarts and worry about Persephone.  
  
“No,” said Hermione, and hauled him harder than ever. Hogwarts tried to catch her foot between a couple of stones, but Harry shook his head, and they clipped back together with a disappointed little sound. “I just went past his door a while ago and found that his goblet of Wolfsbane was sitting outside it, full.”  
  
Harry frowned. “Well, then maybe he didn’t intend to refuse it. Maybe he got caught up in something else and forgot to take it.” Not that that would make so much difference, if they now had a dangerous werewolf on the loose.  
  
Hermione shook her head. “I made sure to cast a Knocking Charm on his door when I put it there. The same one that I used on your door just now. It would have startled him out of whatever he was doing. And I heard him say that he knew the Wolfsbane had arrived.”  
  
Harry gave a single sharp nod. Then something else had happened, something that might threaten most of them. But he wondered how it could have happened if he had full control of Hogwarts.  
  
A quick push of his magic into the stones that formed the floor of the corridor showed that he had the full support of this part of the castle, at least. Trails of gold curled around in front of him, shimmering light that grew brighter the nearer they got to Ombershade’s door. Hermione looked a little reassured.  
  
Harry glanced down at the untouched cup of Wolfsbane, then abruptly knelt and looked at it again. “Hermione,” he said. “Are you sure this is the right potion?”  
  
“What? Of course it is!” Then Hermione sniffed and crouched down beside him, reaching out with one hand to touch the side of the goblet.  
  
Harry caught her wrist before she could do it. He didn’t know for sure if the poison he could sense in the goblet would react through skin as well as by being ingested, but he didn’t want to take the chance. Besides, the goblet had some condensation near the edge of the rim, dark purple bubbles like the kind that might have come off wine. Harry knew that didn’t happen with Wolfsbane.  
  
“I made this myself,” Hermione whispered. “How could this have happened?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said, although he had an idea. Hermione had purchased the ingredients for the Wolfsbane outside the castle, although she had made the potion with her own hands. That meant someone could have slipped them poisoned ingredients—and that was the kind of sabotage that the wards and even Harry’s full control of Hogwarts wouldn’t catch. Ill intent in someone who was actually here, that they could perceive, but not ill intent from elsewhere. “But it would explain why Ombershade didn’t take it.”  
  
Hermione glanced up at Harry with what might have been actual tears in her eyes. “He—he probably smelled it and thought we were trying to kill him. And by that time, it was too late for him to go anywhere.”  
  
“Or he stayed in his rooms when the transformation began because he knew what would happen if he came out of them.” Harry stood up. “I’m going in there.”  
  
“Harry, without the Wolfsbane, he’s a killing machine.” Hermione stood up with her hand on her wand, as if she actually thought it was her duty to prevent him, or that she could. “You can’t let him out, but we can’t hurt him, either. We’ll just have to replace whatever he does rip up in his werewolf form.”  
  
Ignoring her, Harry closed his eyes and listened as hard as he could through the door. The stones inside the room rippled, and then opened eyes and ears of their own. Harry was cautious; he thought Ombershade might attack any strange movement.  
  
He could see a huge brindled wolf pacing around the center of the room. He had already ripped apart pillows and what looked like a large amount of parchment, as well as rags that had probably been the clothes he was wearing when he changed. Harry nodded grimly. That fit his hypothesis that Ombershade had been sufficiently distracted not to try and drink his Wolfsbane until right before the transformation, and by then, it had been too late for him to even call for help.  
  
Harry shut the eyes and withdrew to his own body, putting his hand on the door. “I’m going in there.”  
  
“ _Harry_.” Hermione sounded like she might faint.  
  
“I’ll be all right,” Harry said, and winked at her a little, which made her mouth drop open in surprise. “I promise. I have control of Hogwarts, remember? And he’s still inside Hogwarts.”  _Although that might have to change in a minute._  
  
He pushed the door open, and commanded the stones to soften beneath Ombershade’s paws at the same time. He promptly heard the frustrated snap and snarl that he had been using the stones to spy on before, and shook his head to scold the werewolf. From the way Ombershade looked up at him with foaming jaws, he didn’t exactly take notice of it, but Harry used it to steady  _himself,_ and that was more important, at the moment, than doing exactly what Ombershade wanted.  
  
“Someone tried to poison you,” he told Ombershade quietly. “I just wish you were human right now, so you could tell us who it probably was. What kind of enemies do you have in the Ministry? Has this sort of thing happened before, that you knew who to suspect?”  
  
Ombershade turned his head to track Harry. The stone clasped around his legs trembled a little as he made an attempt to lunge, but they were as good as so many traps and kept him still. Ombershade snarled promptly, his tail tucking down between his legs for a second.   
  
Harry chose to take that as a good sign. He knew that Remus had told him sometimes he seemed to have a scrap of self-restraint left even when he wasn’t under the Wolfsbane, and while in this case, Ombershade was probably just wishing he had the self-restraint to lure Harry closer, Harry would take what he could get.  
  
“On the other hand, it doesn’t take much to trigger a werewolf’s nose,” Harry went on in a musing voice. He had moved around to the side again, taking care to get no closer to Ombershade. “Whoever sent this had to have at least known there was the  _possibility_ that you would smell it.” He cocked his head at Ombershade. “You’d think that would encourage them to send something subtler.”  
  
Ombershade lunged at him again, and then tilted his head back and loosed the most ear-splitting howl Harry had ever heard. Then he turned and began to bite at his own flank.  
  
Harry frowned. Yes, that was the other problem with werewolves not under the potion, wasn’t it? The reason it was risky to keep them shut up in their rooms the way that Ombershade had been planning to do with himself once he realized that he had no Wolfsbane to take. They would start ripping at their own fur and bodies the way that Ombershade had ripped at the room.  
  
So either Harry watched one of his allies injure himself, or he watched him injure Hogwarts. Neither choice was acceptable, and that meant Harry had a different one in mind.  
  
“Hermione,” he said, raising his voice, in case Ombershade howled again. There was no sign that he would, right now, but having his mouth full of his own hair and flesh wasn’t any better. “Get away from the door.”  
  
There was a choked whimpering noise, but Harry opened eyes in the wall, and saw that she was doing it. Her hands were clasped to her mouth, and she was pale and sick and shaking. Harry winced. He hadn’t meant to hit her  _that_ hard with this command.  
  
Harry turned back to Ombershade. As though the werewolf sensed the change in the air, perhaps from his smell, he had let go of his flank. He was watching Harry with eyes that were far more golden and dangerous than his memory of Remus’s eyes, even when Remus had turned into a wolf and attacked them.  
  
“Come on,” Harry whispered. “You need room to run and something to hunt, don’t you? Well, you’ll have it.”  
  
He backed up to the door, aware that Ombershade literally didn’t twitch a hair, but simply watched him, tongue lolling out of his jaws now. Harry stepped out into the corridor and made sure that Hermione was on the other side of it. Then he turned back and snapped his fingers.  
  
The stones of the floor released Ombershade’s paws.  
  
He bolted forwards, silently, which made it worse. Harry had thought he would howl the way he had when he’d realized he couldn’t get free, but that didn’t happen. He simply aimed and hurtled at Harry, his leaps carrying him clear of the floor. He seemed to have reasoned out that the stones could trap him if he touched that for very long.  
  
But he still had to pass between the walls, and Harry still had complete control of Hogwarts.  
  
Harry snapped his fingers again, and a tunnel opened in the wall, like the kind that he used to let messenger owls fly to the Owlery, the stones shooting out and changing form as they flew. They ended up coiled in a linked chain around Ombershade’s throat. Ombershade hit the ground again the moment he felt them and began to roll back and forth, rubbing his back against the floor he’d been so anxious to avoid.  
  
“What is he doing?” Hermione whispered, from closer than Harry still wanted her to be. “Is it hurting him?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but that was Hermione. She would want to make sure any magical creature was all right, even one that had been on the verge of hurting her. And she had taken responsibility for these particular magical creatures, and brewed the poisonous potion with her own hands. No wonder she wanted to stay and see.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “Only marking him, and making sure that he won’t be as much of a danger tonight as he could be. It can freeze him at any time.”  
  
Ombershade, meanwhile, was back on his paws. Either the nearness of his prey or the fact that the stone collar didn’t shift an inch seemed to have made him determine that he couldn’t get it off. And in the meantime, he had better things to do.  
  
 _Like rip, and tear, and kill,_ Harry finished in his mind, seeing those glittering eyes fixed on him.  
  
Ombershade howled again. Harry could imagine how the howl would panic most people and animals who heard it, driving them mad and making them run without thought, until they headed straight into a werewolf’s jaws.  
  
But Harry wasn’t most people. He was the Lord of Hogwarts, in his court. He just waited with folded arms, until Ombershade gave up the howl as a bad business and ran towards him again.  
  
Harry stepped backwards, almost dancing, the floor of Hogwarts turning soft and fluid under him, the stones grasping him and moving him, faster than even a werewolf could turn. Ombershade missed his strike, and tried to turn and come at him from the side. Harry grinned as he slid out of the way again. On his own, he might misjudge the werewolf’s speed, but Hogwarts wouldn’t, and Hogwarts was there primarily to take care of him.  
  
“You’re  _playing_ with him?” Hermione whispered from the side.  
  
Until then, Ombershade had been too focused on Harry to notice her, but not now. He whirled around, and all four feet left the ground at the same time.  
  
Harry raised his fingers and crooked them. The stone collar clicked into action around Ombershade’s neck, and it was the frozen statue of a werewolf that hit the floor and wobbled there, on its side.  
  
“I’m playing with him,” Harry said, and fastened his eyes on hers. “I’ll make sure that he gets the exercise he needs, so that he doesn’t damage himself or anyone else. No one else can do it. But in the meantime, Hermione,  _get the fuck out of here._ ”  
  
For once, she listened. Harry heard her running all the way down the corridor, and after that, he used the flickering awareness of her that he had through Hogwarts’s wards, connected to the beat of her heart, to track her. Only when he was sure that he heard a heavy door slam in the distance did he release the collar’s hold on Ombershade.  
  
Ombershade didn’t even seem to roll as he left the floor and leaped at Harry’s throat.  
  
Harry melted back through the wall, and Ombershade bruised his noise and nothing else on the stones. Harry heard him clawing and howling with frustration; Harry was just beneath the surface of the wall, and it was like being sealed inside a thick, heavy, warm second skin. One that couldn’t be infected by any blow of a werewolf.  
  
But Ombershade was digging at the wall now, determined, and small silvers of it were raining down. Harry had Hogwarts move him to the far edge of the nearest window, and then he stepped out again and sat there, waving his hand and whistling.  
  
Ombershade flattened himself to the floor this time, and began a slower stalk.  
  
Harry knew how it would end, with the same burst of speed and the same digging, and he climbed out onto the sill of the window instead. Ombershade tracked his movements, eyes shining almost orange.  
  
He needed to get him out here, Harry thought, into the grounds, empty at night, where Ombershade could run and work off some of that energy. He had thought of the Forbidden Forest at first, but there was too great a chance that he could lose track of Ombershade there and he could hurt a centaur or another of Harry’s allies.  
  
“Come on, then,” he said. Ombershade’s ears swiveled towards him. He was probably aware of Harry in all sorts of ways that Harry couldn’t even think of, Harry decided. Nose and ears and other werewolf magical senses working together. “Unless you think that you can’t jump on me through the window.” He stuck his hand back through the window and wriggled it.  
  
Ombershade had started growling, perhaps at the taunting tone in his voice, which he might still be able to interpret despite not having his human mind, but he focused on Harry’s hand then and  _jumped_. Harry hadn’t known how powerful those hind legs were, how close Ombershade’s jaws would actually snap this time.  
  
How close he would come to losing a hand.  
  
Harry managed to pull his hand back with something that he hoped looked like composure, and lean back away from the window that the werewolf was struggling to get out of. The stones of Hogwarts weren’t making it easy for him, closing in around the sides as if they assumed that they would be called on to crush his neck instead of simply collar it.  
  
“Poor baby,” Harry whispered, and clucked his tongue. “I think that you could come after me if you wanted.”  
  
And he jumped, sliding fast down the walls, knowing that the stones would catch him and support him. He got scrapes and bruises doing it, that was true, but if those were the only wounds that he carried out of this night of teasing a werewolf, he would be lucky.  
  
Harry landed easily on the grass, and glanced up at the window. Ombershade still crouched there, staring at him.  
  
“Well,” Harry said, and wriggled his hand at him again, at the same time as he commanded the window to widen and let Ombershade go.  
  
The werewolf wasted no time springing out and downwards, landing in front of Harry on silent feet that tore up the grass. He raced forwards again, and Harry began to dance and spin, the earth moving around him, acting as wolf-traps when he needed it to, and the collar of stones freezing Ombershade if he got too close.  
  
And Harry led him a merry chase, and he bit no one, and didn’t harm the grounds of Hogwarts, and didn’t bite himself, either. And that meant it was worth it.  
  
Some people might disagree. But their opinions weren’t exactly important.


	20. Not Amused

“Can you think of anyone who would want to kill you?”  
  
Ombershade snatched a piece of meat from the plate whole before answering. Harry leaned back in his chair, legs propped up on the table before him, and let Ombershade eat. Harry had made him expend a lot of energy during the night without giving him a single bite, after all.  
  
“Not me specifically,” Ombershade replied at last, surfacing from a deep-sea plowing of his plate. “What I represent, perhaps. Werewolves acting in their own interests, without hanging back and waiting to see which wizards will serve them best.”  
  
“Yes, I could see that,” Harry murmured. And it would solve the puzzle of how someone had hoped to get away with putting poison that a werewolf could smell in the potion. They hadn’t targeted Ombershade, unless they’d hoped that Harry would execute him for the murders afterwards. They had targeted whoever he would have leaped on once he managed to get out of his rooms. The poisoner definitely couldn’t have foreseen that Ombershade would remain inside his rooms instead of being outside them.  
  
“I think it ran deeper than that,” Greenbush said. She was sitting at the table with them before Harry could blink. Students had already been dismissed to classes, and it ought to have been easy to see her cross the broad, empty space of the Great Hall. But instead, she claimed a plate of bloody meat of her own and stared at Harry. “I think someone wants to destroy a good part of your court and what you claim to stand for. A werewolf breaking free and killing people would do that—destroy some of your literal human support and your promise to be a safe sanctuary for magical creatures at a single stroke.”  
  
Harry grimaced. “I’d already assumed the poison originated with the Ministry. I don’t know if it’s fair to assume more than that.”  
  
“Who cares about  _fair_?” Ombershade looked up from his plate, and his eyes had the wild shine of the wolf’s. “Someone nearly got me murdered last night, one way or the other. More, someone tried to make me  _into_ a murderer. I think we have the right to take this personally.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Well. Yes.” He had had the feeling of fighting mostly alone against the Ministry for so long, he had forgotten that other people wouldn’t be amused when the Ministry tried to play with their lives in the course of destroying Harry.   
  
He turned to Greenbush. “Was your potion poisoned as well?”  
  
Greenbush shook her head and sucked a little juice off her fingers. “No. I suspect that whoever sent the poison only had enough to sneak into some of the ingredients, and it was entirely a matter of chance which ones ended up in which potion. If you think about it as an attempt to assassinate one of us, this was a risky strategy. The Ministry had no way of knowing that Miss Granger would put enough poison in one goblet to kill whoever drank it. We could have ended up with all the poison in mine, or Ombershade’s, as happened, or with it so mixed up and diluted that there wasn’t enough to harm either one of us.”  
  
Harry frowned and opened his mouth, to ask if she thought someone other than the Ministry had sent it, but then shook his head. Of course. She was saying  _if_ this had been a plan to kill them, which meant it probably wasn’t.  
  
“Is it a kind of poison that you’ve smelled before?” he asked instead.  
  
Ombershade shook his head fiercely, but Greenbush murmured, “Yes. It has similarities to False Aconite, which is a potion and not an herb, no matter what it sounds like. It’s supposedly a less dangerous version of the Draught of Living Death. Or that’s how it developed and was marketed. In reality, if you add enough wolfsbane to the potion, it tips over into a poison. It might kill in the victim’s sleep, so it can be hard to tell from a heart attack, but the smell is very distinctive.”  
  
“Like the potion,” Harry said. “But not that.”  
  
Greenbush gave him a friendly contemptuous glance. “Of course not. No potion could survive, unchanged, the extensive brewing process that creates the Wolfsbane. There would have been an explosion or some other sort of reaction that would have alerted Miss Granger long before she got to that stage.”  
  
Harry nodded thoughtfully, and swallowed some water. “Then it was an attempt to undermine my court, you’re sure, but with a poison that only resembles some others, but  _isn’t_ them.”  
  
“That’s what I said.” Greenbush’s voice was low, as if she thought that Harry was making fun of her because he wasn’t following everything right away.  
  
“Good,” Harry said, and faced Ombershade. “Are you up to talking to Hermione today? If you can figure out what poison was used, she might be better able to track back the ingredients she got, and decide which ones they were and where they came from.”  
  
Ombershade grimaced at him, but it was a comical one, and he stood up and put one heavy-nailed hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I’m sore, but I might have been much worse than that,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Yes, I can do that.”  
  
He limped away, and Harry watched him go. It was a moment before he realized that Greenbush wasn’t doing the same thing, as he had assumed she would, but staring at him without expression instead. Harry twisted his head. “What?” he asked, and picked up his cup of water to drink the rest of it.  
  
“I heard about what you did for Ombershade,” Greenbush said, and leaned forwards. “And while I am grateful, and it did work out well, only another werewolf could tell you how dangerous that was. One who was sane last night,” she added, effectively cutting off what Harry was about to say, that Ombershade knew what had happened and  _he_ hadn’t talked about how dangerous it was. “We cannot afford to lose you.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Do you think I would have gone up against Ombershade unless I was sure of what I was doing? And it’s not like I would advise anyone  _else_ to do it. I knew that Hogwarts would protect me, and that’s the only reason that I did it.”  
  
Greenbush leaned forwards. There were sparks in her eyes, too, and ones that made Harry more cautious than the ones in Ombershade’s eyes did, because this woman was fully in control of her actions. “You cannot predict the outcome of every event. You did not predict that the Ministry would manage to seize you. You should be more careful. At the very least, you should have plans in place for how your court would function without you. Do you?”  
  
Harry knew his silence condemned him. Still, he would have come up with a defense if Greenbush hadn’t stood up, shaken her head, and said, “You should.” Then she strode out of the Great Hall, almost as fast and silent as a wolf.  
  
Harry scowled at the far wall. Then he sighed and stood up. He still had things to do, things that had nothing to do with the investigation into who had poisoned Ombershade. He would have to leave that up to Hermione and the werewolves for a while. He hadn’t been in contact with the poisoned potion before it got served to Ombershade. Hermione knew more about Potions theory anyway, and so did Greenbush, if some of the things she had said about False Aconite were any indication.  
  
Harry just had everything  _else_ to worry about: classes, soothing the members of his court, the new proposal of alliance that had arrived on his desk yesterday, Persephone’s strange behavior…  
  
And Draco. This time, Harry wouldn’t wait for news to make its way to Draco; he would tell Draco about his fencing with Ombershade last night before someone else could. He didn’t think Draco was likelier to be any happier than Greenbush, but at least he would have the evidence of Harry’s trust in him.  
  
*  
  
“This had better be important.”  
  
Draco felt his voice soften anyway when he saw Harry in the fire. Harry’s call had come at a slightly inconvenient time, it was true, drawing Draco away from a planning meeting with Rosenthal, but it could have been far more inconvenient. There were no visitors from the Ministry or other places Draco needed to impress this time.  
  
“Is everything all right?” Draco asked, because it seemed to him that Harry was looking a little pale.  
  
Harry yawned before he answered, which reassured Draco. Whatever it was might have cost Harry a night’s sleep, but he would be snapping through the yawn if it was really urgent. “Someone tried to poison Ombershade’s Wolfsbane last night.”  
  
The name of the potion told Draco more than the name of the person did. He couldn’t recall the names of all the people who had entered Harry’s court lately, but werewolves were a bit more important. He frowned. “Did they succeed?”  
  
“They succeeded in putting the poison in the potion,” Harry said. “Probably by sending ingredients that Hermione used to make it which were already infused with the venom. Luckily, he smelled it in time and didn’t drink it.”  
  
Draco winced. “I have to admit that I don’t think it’s lucky if you had to put a wild werewolf down last night, or even just cage him until he subsided.” He knew that Harry’s bond with Hogwarts would make wounds to the castle echo with pain in his own body.  
  
Harry gave him a half-embarrassed smile. “Well, I couldn’t let him hurt other people, but I also couldn’t let him hurt the castle. So I, uh, put a collar of stone on his neck that would freeze his movements if I really needed it to—”  
  
“Hogwarts stone?” Draco interrupted. He hadn’t known that Harry’s bond with the castle could include things like that, but it made sense.  
  
Harry nodded. Before he could continue, Draco murmured, “Well, that is fortunate for you, but hardly something you needed to contact me for.” He was trying to feel out why Harry would have wanted him to know about this. Just to watch out for poison? Did he have evidence that someone might try to threaten Draco as well as other people who were allied with him?  
  
Harry coughed. “I, uh, couldn’t be sure that letting him go into the Forbidden Forest would be a good idea later. He might have run too fast for me to catch up with him and control him with the collar when I needed to.”  
  
Draco narrowed his eyes. “Spit out what you called to say, Harry.”  
  
“I used myself as bait,” Harry said. He started talking rapidly, probably because he knew that the way Draco’s mouth fell open a little wasn’t a good sign. “I mean, I did it because I knew that Hogwarts would keep me safe. It could slide me around the corridors and the grounds like I was skating. I was the only one in the castle who would have been safe. We couldn’t risk him killing a child or a centaur or anyone living there or—”  
  
“You fled from a werewolf all night,” Draco interrupted him. He knew his voice was flat, but he didn’t know who could blame him, other than maybe Harry himself.  
  
“Well, yeah.” Harry looked at him a little anxiously. “I think it was more like playing, but you could call it flight if you wanted.”  
  
“I  _do_ want.” Draco planted his hands on the cushions on either side of him and leaned forwards. Harry winced, even though they weren’t physically in the same room and Draco couldn’t have reached him. “Listen to me. What you did was stupid, foolish, and dangerous. Freeze Ombershade and confine him all night. Why couldn’t you do  _that_?”  
  
“I was worried that he would hurt himself if I tried something like that,” Harry said. “And I only thought of using the collar of stones after I realized that he was pacing around inside his room and hurting himself.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes. “That doesn’t answer my question.”  
  
“It really does.” Harry sounded apologetic, but Draco knew the expression that would have overcome his face if Draco looked, one of his most stubborn ones. “I didn’t think of everything I could do right at first, and I honestly  _did_ plan to leave him locked up. But he was tearing at the walls, and when I imprisoned him by trapping his paws in the floor, then he started biting his own flank. I didn’t want that to happen, either.”  
  
Draco opened his eyes. He was calmer than he would have been if he had heard about this and not known Harry survived. But he still had something important to say. “Did you consider what your court would do without you?”  
  
“I thought I wouldn’t die.”  
  
Harry’s head had acquired that particular tilt that meant he wasn’t going to change his mind no matter what Draco said. Draco gritted his teeth and tried to dig deeper anyway. “You thought. Did you know for certain? You can’t anticipate absolutely every circumstance. I would rather have you worry about this now than end up facing enemies that you don’t know how to defeat.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Greenbush said something like that. Her Wolfsbane wasn’t poisoned, and she spent the night sleeping in her rooms. I think that she understands the dangers that would come from keeping Ombershade cooped up, but she wasn’t happy about the way I danced with him anyway.”  
  
Draco refrained from snapping at the word “danced.” It would only encourage Harry to retreat into his stubborn shell when it came to this action and consider himself in the right. Instead of arguing that he’d been wrong, Draco thought he should concentrate on the emotional consequences of the situation.  
  
He lowered his head and shut his eyes. “It’s not only your subjects who would have reason to mourn losing you,” he whispered. “Or people who want to oppose the Ministry. Some of your…allies would be sorry to see you go, too.”  
  
“You’re more than an ally, Draco.” Harry sounded as soft and repentant as Draco could wish, and he opened his eyes to see Harry stretching his hand out to the fire. He snatched it back an instant later, but his face was still gentle and open. “I never meant to cause you any kind of distress, you know. I was only…”  
  
“I know what you were only,” Draco said, and stared up at the ceiling of his room. “But you have to realize that you can’t handle every challenge in the first way that occurs to you. The most dangerous way. If nothing else, this could encourage the belief that you’re insane, just like every other Dark Lord that Britain has ever had.”  
  
Harry made a small noise, small enough that Draco couldn’t tell what it was. Then he said, slowly, “It was still right to make sure that Ombershade and my court and the castle didn’t suffer.”  
  
“I agree that you had to do that.” Draco turned more squarely to face him. “Your bond with the castle and the fact that you  _keep_ your promises, unlike some other Dark Lords I could name, mean that you couldn’t do anything else.”  
  
“But maybe I could have found a different way to do it.” Harry frowned at his hands. “I don’t think that freezing Ombershade in place with the collar and leaving him like that would have made him very happy with me. On the other hand, Greenbush wasn’t happy with me for putting myself in danger.”  
  
Draco nodded, his heart full. This was encouraging, he thought, the right direction for Harry to go. He  _had_ to remember that he had more responsibilities than whatever lay in front of him at the moment. And he had to remember that his magic couldn’t keep him safe from everything, the way it hadn’t from Gorenson.  
  
“There’s nothing you can do that will make everyone happy with you,” Draco said. “You learned that with the Ministry.”  
  
Harry snorted, a spark flaring to life in his eyes. “I also learned that maybe I should have more important concerns than  _whether_ I’m going to make people happy with me.”  
  
Draco held up his hands. “I know, but it’s less easy to abandon the oaths and promises and bonds that you have now.” He smiled. “And I hope it’s less easy to abandon your lovers, too.”  
  
Harry smiled at him with his heart in his eyes. Draco went on with more confidence. “Just think about it more. You said that Greenbush was fine. You could have gone and woken her up and explained the situation to her. A werewolf under Wolfsbane can still understand English. She might have been able to help you with Ombershade, even if she didn’t think locking him up all night was a good idea.”  
  
Harry sighed. “That’s true. I’ll try to think about it. I don’t want to appear any more insane than I already am.” Then he looked Draco in the eye. “But I also wanted you to know so that you would hear it from me, rather than someone else. You have every right to know.”  
  
That caused enough of a warm glow to carry Draco through the rest of the day.   
  
Of course, it was helped by the kiss that Harry flung through the fire before he went back to his own court duties, and the burning sensation that his magic imprinted on Draco’s lips.


	21. A New Delegation

“We haven’t managed to find the source of the poison yet,” Hermione told him, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She looked as if she’d been peering down into a cauldron that released strong fumes; her eyes were red around the corners, and her face had streaks of grime on it. “But we’re going to find them!”  
  
Harry half-smiled. Most of his attention was on Persephone, who sat in the middle of her perch, her head turned so that she was picking through her feathers. She felt him looking, or so he supposed, and turned around, making a crooning noise that was too sweet to be the demand it would usually be.  
  
“You’re still worried about her?” Hermione followed his gaze. “But isn’t it good that she’s become less impatient and angry with you?”  
  
“Not if Gorenson is controlling her.” Harry stood up and walked over to the perch. Persephone watched his face instead of his fingers, and while Harry would once have thought that meant she was coming up with a plan to peck out his eyes, he didn’t think it was the case this time.  
  
“But you don’t know that he is,” Hermione pointed out, sounding sensible and calm, in the way Harry wished he could feel. “Until you know for sure, it seems a little silly to worry about it.”  
  
Harry bit his lip and reached out to tickle the middle of Persephone’s back. She accepted it, even leaning into his touch. He shook his head. This didn’t  _feel_ like the same phoenix he had created out of Dark magic and fire. What was he supposed to do with her?  
  
Well, maybe he would send her on the mission to the new magical creatures who had approached him asking for an alliance. She had taken the message to the centaurs when she was acting far less trustworthy. Maybe he ought to trust her more.  
  
 _As far as I can ever trust her._  
  
“Are you up to a long flight?” he asked her, and nearly winced when her eyes brightened and she bobbed her head so hard it seemed as if she would fall off the perch. He reached back to his desk and picked up the tied scroll he had prepared, sealed with a few spells that wouldn’t open until someone of sufficient authority touched the scroll. “Then take this and fly to the Veela country in the south of France. When you get there, sing. They’ll be waiting for a message from me anyway, but I think you taking it will be an honor they weren’t expecting.”  
  
He held his breath, waiting for the snap or the snatch at the scroll and the ripping it to pieces that would have accompanied any order like this that he tried to give Persephone before her…change.  
  
Instead, Persephone gave a musical note as if she was practicing her song for the Veela already, and extended her neck gracefully, picking up the scroll delicately in her beak. She seemed afraid that her talons might rip it. She turned and flew over to the window of the office, hovering patiently until Harry Vanished the glass, rather than smashing through it. She soared off.  
  
Harry sighed.  
  
“You’re too worried over her,” Hermione said. “Until she starts acting against you, I think you can just accept that the confinement in that bubble in the Ministry changed her. Maybe it scared her and made her realize that she was better off sticking close to you.” Hermione leaned insistently forwards, making Harry turn to regard her. “Now, what was this about the Veela?”  
  
Harry nodded. “Some of the Veela in the south of France, especially ones who have the last name Delacour, are writing to me.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but they want to immigrate here.”  
  
“To your court, or to Britain?” Hermione stood up straight, eyes on him as if this was a vitally important answer.  
  
“To my court.” Harry shook his head. “They gave me a story about wizards in France being unwelcoming, but I don’t know if that’s the real reason. The problem is, if they’re spies, who is it for? The Ministry wouldn’t reach out that far to find allies, especially magical creatures. Too many of the Ministry distrusts them.”  
  
“Unless this is Gorenson’s work,” Hermione muttered darkly. “I wouldn’t put it past him to reach out to allies wherever he could, and not really care who they were or  _what_ they were as long as they could do what he asked them to.”  
  
Harry smiled a little. “So he’s powerful enough to reach out to Veela in France and make them support him, but he’s not powerful enough to control Persephone?”  
  
“I think that he realizes he can’t control her,” Hermione said, ignoring the teasing tone in his voice. Maybe that was for the best, now that Harry thought about it. He was too upset about Persephone to have a calm argument. “But reaching out to Veela and having them at least send a suspicious letter wouldn’t take too much effort.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Well, we’ll see what response they make to the message Persephone is carrying. And maybe any control he does have over her will be broken with distance, and when she returns, she’ll be more like her normal self,” he added, although without much conviction.  
  
Hermione gave him a jaundiced look as she stood up. “Only you would want a return to the nasty bird she used to be.”  
  
Once again, Harry didn’t bother responding, and Hermione left the office. Harry leaned his feet on his desk, since no one was around to scold him, and stared out the window. Sending the message with Persephone had been a calculated risk and one of the best things he could think to do, but he was still uneasy.  
  
He wished he could be with Draco at the moment, although considering what Draco was doing today, that might have been more than a little inconvenient for Draco’s Ministry campaign.  
  
*  
  
“You agree with me that attacks on the freedom of the press cannot be tolerated?” Skeeter’s eyes were kindling as she leaned towards him.  
  
Draco looked down at his own meal and toyed with it a bit. He and Skeeter were meeting in the back of the Hog’s Head. Skeeter had ensured that she would get there without being seen, and Draco knew she was more than capable of it, so that had left him with the responsibility to cast a glamour over his face—not the one he had perfected before, since everyone now thought Louis Downe was Harry’s lover—and find his way into Hogsmeade via unremarkable Apparition. He wondered if there really were no anti-Apparition wards around the place now, or if they had simply let him through because of who he really was.   
  
“I agree with you that attacks like that shouldn’t be tolerated,” Draco said. “But I have to admit, I’m equally indignant about the attacks on  _me_.”  
  
Skeeter sniffed a little, as if to say that being interested in themselves was a common failing of politicians. “The problem is, none of the investigations I’ve launched so far can give me a real name. It seems as though there’s a whole network of people running around, all of them with different names and expertise in different Departments, but I know that can’t be true. They would have attacked before now if they had that much strength.”  
  
Draco looked up sharply, or started to. He controlled the abrupt motion of his neck and turned back to his meal instead. He wasn’t about to show too much interest in Skeeter’s statement, lest she interpret it the wrong way. He was afraid that his voice shook with excitement anyway when he spoke, though.  
  
“What if I could tell you the name of the man who’s behind that? The man who uses different names and moves between different Departments in the Ministry? The one he’s currently using?”  
  
Skeeter eyed him narrowly, one hand curled around her glass of nameless ale as if she didn’t know whether he was about to try and spill it. “I would want to know how you found out that name.”  
  
“He did something unwise,” Draco said. “Exposed himself on a different flank while he was trying to guard against this one. I’m almost positive he was the one who tried to kill us, the one on the roof.” Even here, he thought mentioning the name of Malfoy Manor was a stupid thing to do. “He’s going by the name Edgar Gorenson.”  
  
It was a pleasure to watch Skeeter’s eyes slowly widen, and see the way her fingers twitched around her glass.  
  
“You mean…” she whispered. “The one who tried to kidnap the Dark Lord? I heard rumors about that, from people who thought they recognized him in that vision Lord Potter’s phoenix showed, but nothing definite.”  
  
Draco nodded. “That’s him.”  
  
Skeeter groped for a second at the side, as if looking for a quill. Then she shook her head and pulled one from the opposite side of her robes. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “If we can take down two enemies with one blow, I mean,” she added, perhaps seeing from the narrowing of Draco’s eyes that the idea of someone trying to assassinate him was not a  _wonderful_ one.  
  
“I don’t know how much revealing his name will do,” Draco warned her. “He has so many that he might just melt away and take up a new one.”  
  
“There are ways and ways to become a new person,” Skeeter said, and her smile narrowed and gleamed until Draco would have felt sorry for Gorenson if he hadn’t tried to actually  _kill_ Draco and kidnap Harry. “And ways and ways to spy someone out.”  
  
Draco smiled back at her. He had no idea how many contacts she had in the Ministry and how many ways into it, how many places she could hide as a beetle and where she would have to talk and go slowly, and he found that he didn’t much care for having more definite knowledge. She would do as she wished, like she always did, but this time, Skeeter’s beetling about might help them.  
  
“And that was the sum total of the information you have for me?” Skeeter was still raptly searching his face. “There’s nothing else that you want to surrender?”  
  
Something horrible and wonderful at the same time occurred to Draco. He ducked his head and let his cheeks flush. He shrugged a little and picked at the skin of his wrist. “There’s something that you could help me with. But I don’t have anything to pay you with. I just gave you the most important information I had.”  
  
Skeeter smiled. She probably knew that Draco was playing her, and Draco knew she knew, and she knew that Draco knew she knew, and altogether it was a game that both participants could play quite cheerfully if they understood each other. “Tell me anyway,” she coaxed. “I might be able to do myself a good turn if I hear what it is.”  
  
Draco stared up at the ceiling for a second, then brought his head down and faced her. “I wondered what they might do next, if they were working at killing all the people at the press conference in my gardens,” he said. “That spell wouldn’t have done damage to just one person, if it had succeeded. I wonder if I’m not more of a threat to the Ministry itself, and not just to Tillipop.”  
  
“That lightning bolt was aimed at the press,” Skeeter said.  
  
“At everyone there,” Draco corrected gently. “It was so wild, and cast with more power than skill. It could have killed a great many people.”  
  
Skeeter paused. Draco saw her rewrite that to whatever she needed in her head so she could accept both Draco’s conclusion and her own, and then she nodded. “All right. What are you saying?”  
  
“I think that someone is trying to take me out of the running before I become Minister. You know it’s likely I will, now?”  
  
He phrased it as a question, but from the contemptuous glance Skeeter gave him, he might as well not have bothered. Skeeter could follow the reality of politics as well as he could. She played with her glass for a moment, then nodded.  
  
“Assassination isn’t a tool that many sitting Ministers have countenanced,” Draco continued smoothly. “It could too easily be turned against them. Yes, there was that time under Bungo the Unfortunate…but so many other things happened during his term, it’s no wonder that one doesn’t get addressed much. It makes me wonder if someone else is behind Minister Tillipop’s campaign. Someone more interested in seeing me dead than him elected.”  
  
Skeeter was quiet. Draco didn’t think that meant she was going to refuse to listen to him. It meant she  _was_ listening, and probably already running several headlines and picking among them for the most scandalous. He sipped and said nothing, ready to let time and Skeeter’s greed for a story do the work.  
  
Skeeter looked him in the eye. “You think that this Gorenson fellow controls the Minister as well as doing everything else?”  
  
Draco shrugged a little and looked down at the tabletop. “I don’t think it’s the  _only_ explanation. But there’s a lot of coincidences added up. How many people are that powerful in the Ministry? So powerful that they would think they could kidnap a Dark Lord without consequences? It’s worth looking into.”  
  
“And if someone should look into it, it’s me.” Skeeter rose to her feet and gave Draco a vicious grin. Draco was just as glad that she was likely to be on his side this time. “I think I can promise you the protection of many curious eyes at the next press conference you deign to give.”  
  
Draco saluted her with his tankard and watched her leave. Glamour or not, he would allow some time to elapse before he followed her. He thought it would give anyone who  _was_ watching them fits, trying to decide whether to follow him or Skeeter.  
  
And in the meantime, he could sit there and contemplate the hopeful possibility that he had created chaos and confusion for their enemies.  
  
 _It couldn’t happen to a nicer lot of people._  
  
*  
  
This time, at least Harry had warning from his bond with Hogwarts the minute a whole bunch of strangers crossed the line of the wards. It was sharp enough to bring his head up from the desk and make him step over to the window before he consciously thought about what he was doing.  
  
The window glass was in the way, so he Vanished it. That left space and room for Persephone to circle in and land on his shoulder, singing. She fluffed out her wings and bowed to an imaginary audience, then turned her head and nuzzled his jaw with her beak.  
  
“Have you recovered now?” Harry asked hopefully, petting her back. If she had enough sense to be proud of herself and interested in showing off, then he thought she had. He waited for a snap at one of his fingers. He wouldn’t let her eat one, of course, but he would come closer than he otherwise might, if she was recovered.  
  
Persephone looked at him with eyes that he could only describe as melting, if he could ever apply that to the hard, bright gaze of a bird, and then bowed her head so he could pet her neck.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and looked out the window. His bond with his phoenix was profound, enough to distract him for a second from his bond with Hogwarts, but now the castle was pushing at him insistently, reminding him that there were people out there waiting for some kind of acknowledgement.  
  
They came slowly across the grounds of Hogwarts, looking around as if they expected traps to spring out of the ground and consume them. They looked like ordinary men and women, although taller and paler than some of the wizards Harry had dealt with, until you glimpsed their silver hair. Then he knew they were Veela, if in fully human form.  
  
Harry muttered under his breath and stepped out the window, sending Persephone flapping off his shoulder in what he knew wasn’t fright, because she was better than that. He slid down the side of the wall the way he had when he was dancing with Ombershade, and onto the grass in front of them.  
  
The nearest Veela paused and lifted her hands to her eyes, as if peering through her parted fingers at him. Harry looked calmly back at her as a concentrated blast of her allure hit him. She probably wondered why he wasn’t on the ground panting at her feet.  
  
“I rule here,” he said, as the allure drained away from him like water into the ground. “That means that I command the performance of permissible magic inside the bounds of Hogwarts. Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here, or not?” He wove a barrier as he spoke, a curtain of colored light and cloth that seemed to billow and ripple around them. It would prevent the Veela allure from traveling beyond it and affecting any members of her court.  
  
The two Veela in the lead glanced at each other. Then a third one stepped forwards from behind them, and bowed to Harry. Harry looked her over quickly. She was an old woman, or so he assumed from the silvery-white sheen of her hair and the way she stood barely as tall as his shoulder.   
  
She gave him a faint smile. “The French Ministry has driven us out of our homes,” she said. “So we have come to you, you see, for sanctuary.”


	22. Clarity of Thought

The talking and the mutual complimenting had been going on for more than an hour, and Harry thought it was time to remind them, at least a little, of who was in charge here.  
  
“Listen,” he said, setting down his mug down with a harsh clink in the middle of his saucer. It had seemed strange not to have cups and saucers with tea, when he was serving it to Veela, but he had regretted it once he saw how they used the saucers to do things like hide their hands and lips. “You’ve talked all this time about hospitality and hostility and all these brutal things that the French Ministry has supposedly done to you, but you haven’t given me any  _details_. Why did they start forcing you out of your homes? They’ve tolerated you for a long time, I think. Hell, I thought Beauxbatons was full of Veela and part-Veela students. Why did they start kicking you out?”  
  
He got more than one cold, blue-eyed stare. Harry ignored that. Draco, and even Persephone, when she was in her right mind, could do cold stares better than these people. And he wasn’t affected by their beauty, so there was one weapon out the window.  
  
The old Veela woman who had greeted him out on the grounds took over again. She was Madame de Lis, Harry had learned, and the others seemed to respect her enough to let her speak for them. “I told you that the French Minister has been most discourteous to us,” she began.  
  
“You did,” Harry said. “And then you said  _nothing else_. I really need to know how he’s been discourteous, and exactly how you expect me to help. Every time I asked you questions, you started hinting around the subject. I don’t understand. Do you want me to go over there and intimidate him into giving you your homes back?”  
  
One of the other Veela, the tallest woman, shifted in her chair, and Harry glanced at her. “It is a kind offer,” she said, her accent fairly thick, so Harry had to concentrate to tell what she was saying. “But it is not—the proper response. You could not do it. You are not having enough power.”  
  
Harry clenched his hand. He knew that everyone in the room felt the tightening strain in their minds, although they probably weren’t aware of what was happening. Madame de Lis did give him a flat stare, though.  
  
“If I hold my power like this,” Harry told them, “then none of you can tell a lie, no matter how much you want to.” He opened his fingers and let the power go. “I could force you into speaking the truth, if you want. Frankly, I don’t want to. It’s boring, and a waste of my time. I’d much rather that you just told me the truth directly. Why all the hinting? Either it’s something really horrible, in which case you should tell me so we can take care of it, or you’re trying to trick me, in which case I’ll find out anyway and throw you out.”  
  
That brought on a lot of whispering in French, which Harry didn’t try to follow. He didn’t think they were fools. Maybe they had come here intending to trick him, but that had been before they knew how powerful he was inside Hogwarts. And if they intended to seek sanctuary in his court, it was good for them to realize just what they would be facing. He held his face still and waited for them to say something or troop out.  
  
Finally, Madame de Lis faced him and said, “The others agree that I can speak.”  
  
Harry just nodded. By his estimation, she had been doing that for a while already, but he welcomed her finally deciding to make it official. Now maybe some business would get done.  
  
“The French Ministry has not done anything solid to us yet.” Madame de Lis spoke as if she was feeling her way through a treacherous, shifting field of broken stones, and ducked her head a bit as she watched him through pale eyelashes. Harry still didn’t move and didn’t show that this was of any interest to him, and Madame de Lis sighed and went on. “But there are rumors circulating. They say that the French Minister is close friends with Minister Tillipop, and intends to copy Britain’s policies of dealing with magical creatures.”  
  
“What are Britain’s policies about Veela?” Harry asked. “I didn’t think we had enough living here to make a difference.”  
  
“Britain has laws for everything,” said a young man near the rear, with a thinner accent than the others and a flash of bitterness deep in his eyes that Harry found himself interested in knowing more about.  
  
Madame de Lis cast him a look and said something sharp in French. The young man folded his arms and scowled at the floor. Madame de Lis sighed again and said, still looking at him instead of Harry, “They say that any large groups of Veela are not permitted. They say that Veela need to be registered and have a check performed on their wands every six months. Perhaps that does not sound strict to you, but it does to us.”  
  
“Are you serious about coming to my court, then?” Harry stretched, and Persephone fluttered on her perch and glanced over. Harry ignored her for the moment. He wasn’t worried anymore, the way he once would have been, about her flying over and attacking one of his guests. “Or did you simply intend to have this as a backup plan? I don’t think you would want lose your homes.”  
  
“Our homes, in the sense of houses,” and Madame de Lis paused until Harry nodded, “are not important to us. We have certain—I am not sure— _souls_ that we take with us. Elements of the soul?”   
  
She stared at Harry as if waiting for him to come up with the word, but Harry just blinked. He didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.  
  
“We have things that we must keep safe,” said Madame de Lis. She looked off to the side. Harry didn’t know if that meant she was annoyed or not. At the moment, it seemed like his best course was just to keep silent and listen. “The French Ministry is making noises that may threaten them. We cannot—even the  _threat_ —”  
  
She fell silent. Harry nodded. “I can understand that,” he said. “But what you said when you first arrived here wasn’t true, was it? The French Ministry hasn’t driven you out of your homes?”  
  
Someone near the back, well, probably two someones from the voices, tried to speak up. Harry ignored them. They had said that Madame de Lis was the one who would speak for them, so he waited for her to say something.  
  
“We thought it would seize your attention,” Madame de Lis murmured at last, in a voice that made it sound as if she was speaking through gritted teeth.  
  
Harry leaned forwards until there were only a few centimeters separating their noses. “Don’t lie to me again,” he said.  
  
Madame de Lis touched her throat, apparently still feeling the pull of the magic Harry had used that had made her unable to lie a few minutes ago, although Harry wasn’t still doing it now. “No. Now there is no need.”  
  
“You think I’ll help you?”  
  
Madame de Lis didn’t appear to find the magic that crackled around him for a second threatening. Maybe she had taken his measure and knew it was unlikely he would really hurt her, Harry thought. She nodded. “I know you will.”  
  
Harry studied them for one more minute, then turned around and whistled. A tunnel in the stones opened, leading down through the walls in the direction of the office he had given Ron. Persephone launched herself off her perch as if they had planned this and down through the little tunnel, her wings barely skimming the sides.  
  
Harry turned back to the Veela, who were staring at him. Yes, he could have opened the tunnel with a simple, silent command, and not whistled, but that made it all the more dramatic, and harder to ignore. “I’ve sent my phoenix to fetch someone who may be able to help us.”  
  
It wasn’t long before Ron climbed the stairs and came in through the door (Harry had never been able to persuade him that walking the tunnels through the walls was perfectly safe). He eyed the Veela a little, then turned to Harry. “Hermione said that we have some visitors. Yeah?”  
  
Harry held back his grin at the expressions that the Veela wore  _now_. “I know that you said Percy had a girlfriend who worked in the French Ministry a while back. Do you think it’s possible that he still might be able to firecall her?” Harry didn’t know how Percy had broken up with the girl, or why; he had just remembered her existence.  
  
“I think he could.” Ron scratched the back of his neck with a serious frown, and didn’t so much as crack a grin in the Veela’s direction. “Do you want me to get hold of him and see if he could?”  
  
“As safely as you can.” Harry knew that most of the Weasleys were keeping their heads low right now. For one thing, Ron’s flight to Harry’s side meant that the Ministry would be watching them closely; for another, several of them had jobs  _in_ the Ministry. “If it takes a bit, that’s all right. But I would like to know what the French Ministry’s policies are about Veela in Southern France right now.”  
  
Ron nodded as if that was a question he had always anticipated being asked, and turned and left the office again. Persephone circled up from the tunnel a second later, landing on her perch and spreading her wings to croon at him.  
  
Harry gave in and scratched her head, the way she seemed to want, before he turned back to Madame de Lis. “This should give you some peace of mind, if we talk to someone who’s closer to the center of power.”  
  
Madame de Lis might have swallowed a beetle. “You investigate us very carefully. Did you do the same thing with the centaurs and the merfolk who wanted to join your court before us?”  
  
“They didn’t lie to me and try to blast me with allure.”  
  
“That was an accident,” said the Veela woman who had done it in a mutter, lowering her eyes to her hands. Harry looked, too, but they were just clasped tightly in her lap, and not moving or threatening.  
  
“It’s still something that none of the others did.” Harry turned back to Madame de Lis. “I interview the humans who want sanctuary in my court very carefully, because they might stab me in the back if they don’t get exactly what they want. I didn’t think that I would have to do it with magical creatures, because I thought they would come for an obvious reason and not act against me. But you have. Why?”  
  
“We wanted you to take us more seriously.” At least Madame de Lis was speaking without hesitating this time, and Harry didn’t think it had anything to do with how good she was at English. “We thought you might reject us if we weren’t currently in trouble.”  
  
“I would have appreciated a message,” Harry said. “And no lie.”  
  
“You’re hung up on that,” muttered someone from the back in what sounded like almost unaccented English. Someone else nudged him in the ribs, and shut him up.  
  
Harry just waited until he was sure he was the center of attention, and held out his hands, palms up. “I’m giving you the same treatment I give the humans who want to become part of my court. I just want to know what the real situation is, and whether you came to me because you want sanctuary  _now_ or if you’re looking for other choices in case the Ministry turns against you. That was all I wanted to know.”  
  
“You are one of our choices.”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “Good. Then we can take some time with the interviews, and you can decide whether you would really be willing to move from your homes, in a beautiful country with a good climate, to come to Hogwarts.”  
  
“If we can take our souls with us, then we have nothing to worry about with regards to the weather.” Madame de Lis looked around as if she was envisioning a storm howling around the thick stone walls, and those walls keeping them out.  
  
Harry wondered whether she meant by souls, then decided that he might as well ask now. “Can you describe what your souls are?”  
  
Madame de Lis spoke in French in response with a few Veela before answering him. Harry waited. This wouldn’t be any worse than interviewing some of the annoying human candidates, provided they had it settled that the Veela were  _not_ going to lie to him.  
  
Finally, Madame de Lis turned back and said, “Veela can…make homes in many different places.” She was picking her way carefully with the words again, and that might have been because of the language or not. Harry waited patiently. “We have our souls in our bodies, but also outside them, in different people and objects. The people we mate with are one such thing. We also have some objects.”  
  
“So they’re like portable mates,” Harry said. He didn’t think he needed to understand secrets that the Veela sounded unwilling to explain to him. He just wanted to make sure of a few things. “How large are they?”  
  
Madame de Lis stared at him as if it was an offensive question, but Harry remained silent. Finally, she said, “They would fit in a house. In a room. They are the things that make the house home.”  
  
 _Like the paintings on the walls and the knickknacks you’ve collected,_ Harry thought. “Are they dangerous to Hogwarts, or to anyone of non-Veela heritage who would be around them?”  
  
Madame de Lis frowned harder. “Do you think that we would bring them into another place inhabited by non-Veela?”  
  
“That’s what I’m trying to determine,” Harry said. He ignored a few of what sounded like gasps of outrage. They were the ones who had brought his distrust upon themselves. They could have told the truth from the beginning, and he would have taken them seriously. “How big a space at Hogwarts would you need?”  
  
“A wing,” said Madame de Lis firmly. “The objects are not dangerous, but they are fragile. They would be vulnerable to destruction if someone intruded into our rooms and did not  _understand_ what they were, but felt their magic. Or perhaps they would want to steal them. Some of them look like jewels and other valuable things.”  
  
 _Look like doesn’t mean “are,”_  Harry thought, and crossed one leg over the other. “You must have seen that Hogwarts has towers and so on, but doesn’t have separate wings laid out like that. What about a floor?”  
  
“We would still be directly above other rooms, and someone might be able to climb into ours.”  
  
“My sister was with Beauxbatons when they came here,” interrupted a boy who looked like he might be about seventeen from the middle of the pack. “She said that there were all sorts of passages in Hogwarts that no one knew about. How would we keep ourselves safe if you put us on a floor?”  
  
Harry smiled gently at him. “Because Hogwarts is bonded to me, and it wouldn’t let strangers into the court in the first place, and it would shut down any secret passages that I asked it to,” he answered. He was sure of that, although to be fair some of those passages were probably protected with magic and he hadn’t actually tried it yet. “I’ll do what I can to make sure that you’re safe. But why is it a problem to have rooms directly below yours?”  
  
Madame de Lis and the others exchanged glances.  
  
“Stop trying to lie to me,” Harry said. He was becoming increasingly weary of this. Did they really think that they could pause and lie to him and that he wouldn’t find out? Or were they counting on digging into the court and then not being thrown out when he discovered the truth because he was too kind? Fuck that. Harry wasn’t going to sacrifice the safety of his court, and the people already here, for those who couldn’t tell the truth even when specifically  _asked_ to. “Just tell me what the reason is.”  
  
Madame de Lis straightened her back and said, “It is not that we wish to lie. It is that—we are not used to telling others about this. It is different. It is sacred, and it is hard. Will you listen?”  
  
Harry nodded, a little calmed down. “All right. Why is it a problem to have rooms directly beneath yours?”  
  
“Because our objects grow,” said Madame de Lis. “They extend…” She paused.  
  
“Roots?” Harry guessed.  
  
Madame de Lis nodded. “They must have room and quiet to grow. In a house, it is not a problem. They can reach into the earth. But here, when they grew down, they would meet the rooms of someone else, if you gave us a floor.”  
  
“I see,” Harry murmured. He didn’t know exactly what these objects were or why they needed so much room, but it seemed likely that at least they weren’t dangerous. “Fine. Give me a few days to think about it. In the meantime, please stay here as my guests.” He waved his hand, and the door of the office swung open. “The castle will guide you to the kitchens, and you can rest and eat. After that, they will escort you to temporary rooms.”  
  
Madame de Lis seemed to decide that it was useless to tell him to make up his mind faster—which it would have been. In the end, she stood, inclined her head the tiniest amount, and followed the tunnel out.  
  
Harry leaned back, propping his feet up higher, and frowned at the wall.  
  
Persephone trilled. Harry looked at her, having the faintest hope that there was something she could do to help—after all, she was a bird, like the Veela resembled—but all she did was crowd closer to him and lower her neck for petting again.  
  
“I wish you were back to your normal self,” Harry told her as he stroked the edges of her feathers. “Maybe you’re nicer this way, but it’s unnerving.”  
  
Persephone just closed her eyes and turned her head to the side, because he wasn’t getting the exact right spot.


	23. An Unexpected Move

“I can guarantee you a hundred watchers.”  
  
Skeeter had said that, but Draco hadn’t thought she meant it literally. He’d had fifty reporters before at his speeches and meetings and conferences and announcements, but not more than that. For one thing, there just weren’t that many reporters in the wizarding world. Most people would rather appear in the news than write about it. For another, they were as likely to decide that they needed to write about Celestina Warbeck and the newest song she was coming out with as politics.  
  
But there were either a hundred reporters on the grass in front of him now, or Draco’s eyes really were deceiving him. He shook his head a little when Rosenthal glanced back at him. “I don’t know. I didn’t expect that many either.”  
  
He saw Skeeter watching him expectantly from the other side of the smallest group, and gave her a weak smile. She smiled back and picked up her robe hems, stalking across the mud towards him.  
  
“Are you surprised that I kept my promise?” she asked as she fell in beside him and Rosenthal and scanned the group with some complacency. “Or merely displeased?”  
  
“I didn’t think you could,” Draco said. “I didn’t think there were that many reporters, let alone ones who would listen.”  
  
Skeeter glanced at him with her eyes gleaming. “Never underestimate my influence in our rather closed little community, Candidate Malfoy.”  
  
“I’ll try,” Draco muttered. He hoped that he didn’t sound shaken. It wasn’t the part of a successful candidate for Minister to sound shaken. “Are you sure that all of them are here to see me speak, though? They could have come for Minister Tillipop.”  
  
Skeeter just looked at him, and Draco recognized the silent demand for trust in her experession. It was the same kind of look that Rosenthal had given him more than once. Draco lifted his hands in silent agreement and turned to Rosenthal.  
  
“Our security arrangements won’t be disrupted by this?” he whispered to her.  
  
“I trust not,” Rosenthal said, and if Draco had learned to read her gestures at all, the way he prided himself that he had, that meant, _Not if I have to change the spinning of the world to make sure that it doesn’t happen._ She stalked away, high on her dignity, to speak to the wardmaker she had hired to stand guard on this particular mess. Draco sighed and shook his head, turning to speak to Skeeter again.  
  
But she had turned from him and was staring across the long expanse of grass at the far podium set up for Tillipop. “What’s this?” she muttered.  
  
Draco looked with her. They were on the grounds of Bellfast Manor, belonging to a minor pure-blood family who had been more than happy to volunteer their grounds as a “neutral” meeting-place for the two Ministry candidates based on the publicity it would bring them. Draco supposed the grass pretty enough, but thought it rather too short and green and unvaried for his own taste. The house, looming off in the background behind Tillipop’s podium where snapping cameras couldn’t fail to capture it, was better.  
  
Tillipop was speaking to someone Draco didn’t recognize, a woman with bronze hair piled so high on her head that she looked as if it might topple over any second. She was gaping up at Tillipop, and opened her mouth as if she might argue. Then she straightened her shoulders and shook her head, so resigned that Draco bit his tongue to keep from snickering.  
  
But then she floating a red banner into place, one that she was hanging in the air with strings of magic. Draco focused on it, wondering if it would explain who she was and what she was doing with Tillipop when Draco had never seen her before.  
  
The banner had long white letters on it that looked to have been conjured, or maybe painted, hastily, because streaks of fresh paint or magic ran away from their sides. It said, MINISTER TILLIPOP RESIGNS FROM MINISTERIAL RACE. _  
  
_Of course, many of the reporters gasped hungrily, and cameras started snapping and flashing. That was the purpose of the banner, Draco was sure, especially as he watched the bronze-haired woman step back with her arms folded and Tillipop hunch down as if he could escape the gaze of the reporters after all. They didn’t want to talk a lot about it. They just wanted to create a good headline and then retire from the contest.  
  
But they had reckoned without Rita Skeeter, and probably without the wizarding public’s appetite for gossip. Draco didn’t know how she had done it—probably she had changed into her beetle form and flown the distance across the grass between them—but she was right up next to the podium where she hadn’t been a moment before, tongue and Quick-Quotes Quill both flashing away as she spoke to Minister Tillipop.  
  
The bronze-haired woman tried to intervene. Skeeter withered her with a single glare.  
  
“Sir?” It sounded strange to hear Rosenthal speak that way, and even stranger because her voice was so low and timid. “Do you want me to go over there and find out what’s going on?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. He burned to go himself, but reporters were already turning to him with questions, and his place was here. He watched Rosenthal hurry off before turning to meet the quill that was thrust almost in his face.  
  
The reporter in question apologized and danced back, which meant she lost her place in the front ranks. Draco listened to the questions flying, faster than he could possibly have answered them all even if he wanted to, brewing his response in his mind.  
  
“Did you know he was going to do this, sir?”  
  
“How do you like being the only viable candidate in the Ministerial race?”  
  
“How will this affect your policy on the werewolves and Dark Lord Potter? Are you going to go and make a treaty with him right now?”  
  
Draco was past his first shock, and made sure to smile slowly and arrogantly, and cock his head. That made a few of the reporters who could see his face best shut up, and the others took their cue from them and at least quieted down, although Draco thought he could hear questions being strangled in the back of some of their throats.  
  
“I don’t know that I am the only viable candidate in the race,” he said, deciding to answer that one first. “Why would I be? If Minister Tillipop has chosen not to stand for re-election, that must mean there are important challenges to the position, challenges that someone else might be better suited to taking on than I would.”  
  
“Do you _really_ believe that?” There was a reporter who looked as if she really had been studying under Skeeter, but had taken all the wrong lessons from the experience. For one thing, she was wearing acid-green glasses of the kind that Skeeter hadn’t worn in years, and waving her quill around so that all the ink flew off it.  
  
Draco gave her a smile that he knew was full of pity, and which made the woman freeze a little before she drooped. “Of course I believe that,” he replied. “Minister Tillipop was making a strong showing in the election.” That didn’t receive a chorus of giggles because the crowd was divided into people who believed it and people too diplomatic to let their disbelief show. “There was no reason for him to give up, unless a challenge arose that was too hard for him, and which he didn’t anticipate. Which meant that I didn’t anticipate it, either. Minister Tillipop knows more about this job than I do.”  
  
He looked over at the podium as he spoke. Skeeter had Tillipop cornered and was probably talking in that voice that sounded so reasonable you found yourself agreeing before you knew what you were agreeing with. Rosenthal stood talking with the bronze-haired woman, one hand raised in a gesture Draco recognized. He relaxed. Rosenthal would at least come back with a good version of the official story, if not the real reason.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
Draco turned around again. A reporter who he thought was the one he had almost bumped into when he turned around the first time flourished her quill above the parchment and nodded to him with what seemed to be encouragement. “Do you think that you could tell me more about how your policies on the werewolves and the Dark Lord Potter will be affected by this development?”  
  
Draco widened his eyes with innocent astonishment. “How can I do that until I know the reason he retired? Of course what happened to cause him to withdraw from the race might affect my policies in that direction.”  
  
The reporter frowned at him, but she wasn’t experienced enough to press the conversation in the direction she wanted, the way Skeeter might—and Draco was thinking many more admiring thoughts about Skeeter than he had ever realized he would. He mentally shook his head and continued to look helpful and innocent, and the woman turned to confront Tillipop instead.  
  
Rosenthal, meanwhile, was on her way back across the garden. Draco glanced at her face and hid his grimace. She was a little pale, and that wasn’t good.  
  
“I did have one question that I think you can answer right now, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy.”  
  
Draco glanced back, expression cool. The full title, as much as the sarcastic way the words were drawled, told him of this person’s hostility, although he didn’t know the voice.  
  
The reporter was a tall man with dark brown hair and eyes who tapped his quill against his teeth and gave Draco a polite smile. Well, polite if you weren’t looking at the rest of his face, anyway. “Could you tell us whether you would _really_ refuse the Ministerial position if it was offered to you today? Someone will have to take Minister Tillipop’s place.”  
  
“But I need to be elected,” Draco said. This reporter looked as if he would prove a greater challenge than the cowardice Draco privately thought had made Tillipop give up on the election, but Draco knew how to answer him. “It wouldn’t be right if they just appointed someone the majority of the people hadn’t chosen, would it?” He widened his eyes again and offered the reporter a smile he had neatly judged. “It will probably be like after the war, when there was a temporary Minister until they could elect another one. But it won’t take as long to get this election together.”  
  
The man, along with several other people, opened their mouths, but Draco turned to meet Rosenthal and said, “Excuse me, I need to speak with my adviser.”  
  
Rosenthal grimaced at him. Draco didn’t let that deter him, but tucked his arm around hers as if he had been dying to work with her all day and guided her further away from the reporters, in the direction of his own podium. He could see a few Bellfast family members wandering around, frowning. He suspected he would have to deal with them later, as they came to terms with their beautiful house no longer being used after all.  
  
“What is it?” Draco asked, when he had made sure that no one was near enough to overhear them.  
  
Rosenthal managed not to close her eyes, but she looked overwhelmed, still. Draco kept walking, now and then moving his lips to fool anyone who was watching them into thinking that they were keeping up an important conversation.  
  
“Well?” Draco asked again, finally. He understood that Rosenthal must have received a severe shock, but Draco was starting to feel a little of the way she looked, just from not knowing what it was.  
  
Rosenthal swallowed and said slowly, “Sir, Minister Tillipop is withdrawing from the election out of fear of Dark Lord Potter. That’s the official excuse, at least. With Lord Potter targeting Aurors and Ministry officials and all sorts of other people, he doesn’t feel safe.”  
  
Draco turned his head and kept her under careful observation. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”  
  
“It isn’t that which makes me feel as if I was about to faint,” Rosenthal snapped back, glaring at him. At least her back was stiffening now, and she was lifting her head as if she had finally begun to recover from the blow. Draco approved. “They’re appointing a sort of council to keep up the Ministry until someone can be elected. And from the way Madam Rufous spoke, they knew it would be you.’  
  
“Who’s on the council?” Draco asked quietly, his mind darting among likely candidates.  
  
“A few Aurors,” said Rosenthal. “People high up in Magical Law Enforcement. Some from the Wizengamot. A name I recognize from the Department of Mysteries.” She sighed. “And Gorenson.”  
  
Draco paused. “How do you know that? Did Madam Rufous actually name him?”  
  
Rosenthal gave a hollow laugh. “Of course not. But she said that there was someone advising them who had as many faces as he had names. Then she grew very mysterious and seemed to think that she shouldn’t have said so much. But I’m sure that they think we only know him as Gorenson, and we don’t know that he moves from position to position in the Ministry and changes so much. We—this is serious, Draco.”  
  
“I would say so, if you’re calling me Draco.” He was trying to tease, but the strained expression on her face didn’t relax much. Well, Draco couldn’t honestly blame her for that. “You’re right, it is serious. I didn’t know Gorenson had that much power or that much ability to control what the Minister did.” He looked thoughtfully across the grass at Tillipop. He was speaking to Madam Rufous and waving his hands around. If he had suffered from loss of power because he wasn’t Minister any longer, he didn’t appear to notice it.  
  
“He may not have been the one who made the decision,” Rosenthal said softly, staring across the garden at Tillipop again. Or the place where Tillipop had been, Draco saw; he was gone, so he must have already Apparated. Madam Rufous was packing up the banner and the podium itself, shaking her head briskly when other people approached her with questions. She probably thought Rita Skeeter—gone as well, Draco noticed—had got enough information about Tillipop’s departure out of him.   
  
“Tillipop was a useful sort of tool. That’s what the people we talked to from the Ministry, who wanted you to replace him, said.” Rosenthal slowly draw a long, thin strand of hair through her fingers, staring at nothing. “I wonder if he’s been discarded because he’s not as useful anymore. But that raises the question of why?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. He was queasy about something else, too, and after a long moment’s hesitation, he brought it up with Rosenthal. He thought she would at least be able to tell him if he was being ridiculous. “And this is a public announcement, too, instead of something private like cutting Minister Tillipop out of most decisions but still using him as a front.” Draco was inclined to believe that had started happening years ago, anyway. “Why shake up the status quo? Why try to make it seem like I’ll be elected, which will most likely happen now? Do you think they’ll try to stop the election?”  
  
Rosenthal shook her head. “I can’t see them announcing this so publicly, if that was going to be their choice.”  
  
Draco had to admit that he couldn’t, either. He simply would have been happier to know Gorenson’s motives behind this.  
  
 _Maybe we’re placing too much importance on him, though. He’s not the only one in the Ministry with power. He’s not the only one who could have decided this, and I’m sure he’s not the most powerful or important person on that council._  
  
Draco flexed his fingers. Maybe it was time to admit the truth: what scared him the most about Gorenson wasn’t his power, but his intelligence. He had come up with a plan that had nearly worked to hold both Harry and Persephone. He had nearly killed Draco. He had kept hidden from public notice for years, and he had enough glamours and other names that he had probably abandoned being Gorenson after his public outing. And Draco thought he was probably the sort who learned from his mistakes.  
  
So if he was ready to move so openly…  
  
 _There must be some reason._


	24. Portable Souls

"Lord Potter, I have a great deal to say to you--"  
  
Harry raised a hand, and Briseis halted in the door of his office, maybe seeing for herself what the problem was. Harry smiled at her and turned back to Madame de Lis. "You were explaining to me why you can't take rooms even in the dungeons?"  
  
Madame de Lis ruffled her robes in a way that suggested she would be growing wings if not for the inconvenience of an audience, and sniffed at Briseis once. Briseis stood very still. Perhaps that was her way of gentling a wild beast, Harry thought. The Veela weren't very far from being that, sometimes. "We told you already."  
  
"No, you really didn't," Harry said, as gently as he could. "You said that you needed rooms with nothing below them, so that your trees could grow downwards from them." He knew that Madame de Lis was bristling at the word "trees," but he didn't know what else to call them. He still hadn't seen one. "So I offered the dungeons, that have nothing beneath them but the earth. And you said it wasn't good enough." He propped his chin on one fist, and wished that Persephone was awake and alert and looking threatening on her perch along with him, rather than out hunting in the Forest. At least he could hope that she was strangling the life out of something small and furry. "I'm awaiting the explanation now."  
  
"We need to live in light places," said Madame de Lis. At least she was answering right away this time, Harry reflected. She seemed to have learned her lesson about lying to him. "We need to be where we can see the sun. And that would not do in a dungeon."  
  
"Is that all?" Harry laughed and lifted his hand.  
  
The stones of Hogwarts began to shift apart, checking as they went to make sure they weren't opening holes in floors where people were standing at the moment. They would take in windows they met along the way, Harry knew, leaning back in his chair and rocking it a little. The Veela were involved in gaping at the new breach that was opening. It seemed that seeing him open a small tunnel for Persephone the other day hadn't inured them to the wonders that Harry could perform thanks to his bond with Hogwarts.  
  
For that matter, Briseis was gaping, too, the wonder on her face so open that it made her look like a young child. Harry smiled and shook his head a little. Briseis deserved a holiday from the worries that plagued her, too many of which Harry feared he caused himself.  
  
The breach at last reached the dungeons, and began to part. Sunlight poured in through the gap. Harry concentrated, and it began to turn rich, deep gold, the color of a late summer afternoon. The scent of ripe and growing things drifted in with it. Briseis and several of the Veela moved towards the light as if drawn.  
  
Madame de Lis wasn't one of them. She clamped her hands on the arms of her chair, apparently to keep from rising, and rolled a suspicious eye at the real window in Harry's office, the one Persephone usually flew out of. It showed nothing but rain and a grey sky beyond it.  
  
Harry nodded to her. "This is a huge version of an enchanted window. It will lead all the way to the dungeons and let in light no matter what the season of the year is, or what the weather is like outside."  
  
"We cannot flourish in the absence of real light," said Madame de Lis, but she was frowning a little, as though she didn't know that for sure.  
  
Harry tilted his hands, and the light falling through the breach streamed in to touch Madame de Lis's hair. She lifted a hand and felt along her scalp. Then she glared at him. "It is warm," she said. "That does not mean it is real."  
  
"Try it and see," Harry said. "Bring one of your portable souls here from France, and move it into the dungeons. I'll create a breach like this. We'll see if it grows with this kind of sunlight or not."  
  
"That would be taking a risk greater than we could justify," said Madame de Lis, but her voice was thoughtful.  
  
"For a Veela who has a mate already, and so another soul moving around outside their body?" Harry gave her a politely disbelieving smile. "Bring the soul of someone who has a guarantee. I don't wish to kill one of your people. But there's only so much I can do for you. I can't extend the walls of Hogwarts without taking stone from elsewhere."  
  
"You cannot build onto the castle?" Madame de Lis's eyes were narrow. "A limited power to your supposedly limitless bond, if so."  
  
"I could," said Harry. "But I would have to attach the stones with mortar in the ordinary way, and then bond with them, the same way that I would take some time to become expert with a new limb, if I was suddenly to have one attached. It's your risk, Madame de Lis. Do as I ask, and find yourself able to have a new home in case the French Ministry ever turns against you, as you fear they might do." From what Ron had been able to learn, the French Ministry wasn't interested in turning against the Southern French Veela any time soon, but this visit to him might make some people in France panic. "Please think about it, and make the right decision."  
  
They exchanged polite smiles, understanding each other perfectly well. Madame de Lis nodded and rose to her feet. "We can at least see what we can do. We will discuss it among ourselves."  
  
Harry bowed and stood back, letting her escort the Veela out of his office. He kept his amusement at how long it took her to detach some of the Veela from the sunlight to himself.  
  
Briseis lingered, face grey again, although now and then she looked at the breach and took the kind of deep and invigorating breath that the Veela had been drawing. Harry was almost sorry when the last one had left and he had to close the breach. He nodded to her. "What was the news you wanted to give me?"  
  
Briseis tightened her fingers in her parchment. "I hope that you can forgive me for interrupting--"  
  
"It _must_ be bad, if you're apologizing like you really are a Death Eater," Harry interrupted, and saw her smile tremulously. "Come on. Tell me."  
  
"Minister Tillipop has retired from the Ministry race," Briseis said, and put the newspaper she'd been carrying down on the table in front of him. "They're saying that a council will govern the Ministry until the election can be properly held and _someone_ elected."  
  
Harry gaped at the paper for a second, then snatched it up, not because he doubted what Briseis was telling him, but he because he wanted to see for himself. Yes, there was the photograph with the unmistakable banner, and Skeeter's breathless article below it. It looked as though Tillipop had announced his retirement right before the confrontation he was supposed to have with Draco.  
  
"Have you heard from Draco or Rosenthal?" Harry murmured, skimming through the article. It told him little more, though. Skeeter had turned out to be smarter than he'd ever thought she was, and more of an ally, but that didn't make her speculations about what would happen next the truth.  
  
Briseis shook her head. "They're probably trying to deal with the news themselves, and the implications for Ministerial Candidate Malfoy's campaign."  
  
Harry nodded his understanding and cast the paper on the table. "I suppose that we should be contacting him, then, and asking if he can spare us any time."  
  
Despite the circumstances, Harry had to grin. Briseis was giving him one of the most offended looks he'd ever seen.  
  
"Of course he can spare _you_ some time," Briseis said. "You're the Dark Lord who's _supporting_ him."  
  
Harry shook his head. "Not openly, or he would never have made this much progress. I don't think the Ministry would have let Tillipop retire no matter how afraid he was, if they thought they couldn't deal with Draco as Minister. And Draco's election is almost a sure thing, you know."  
  
"Well, perhaps they have some plan for stopping that," Briseis muttered. "Perhaps that's what his assassination by Gorenson was meant to secure. And no matter what you have to say on the surface, Malfoy knows what he owes to you in private."  
  
"We don't think of our relationship that way," Harry said quietly, giving her a warning glance. Being Briseis, she took it in good part, but still scowled at him a little. " _Anyway_. We need to move to have a public statement ready, in case someone's brave enough to ask for one for the papers. And I should spend some more time with my court." He stood up.  
  
Something tapped at the window. Harry looked over, expecting an owl, but Persephone hovered there instead. He sighed and Vanished the glass. He could have dealt with a Persephone who looked kindly on him after his escape from the Unspeakables, but a _polite_ one was more difficult to deal with.  
  
Persephone landed on his shoulder without the glad croon that Harry had become accustomed to receiving from her. She huddled close to him, and Harry stared hard at her. Her feathers looked matted, and her eye was glazed.  
  
" _Briseis_ ," Harry said.  
  
Briseis knew that tone, and she snapped to attention, with no attempt to argue. "My Lord?"  
  
"Come up with the public statement, and reassure the members of my court," Harry snarled, stepping up to the wall. It trembled and breached, the way it had when he was showing the Veela how he would provide sunlight to the dungeons, and some of the stones folded flat to provide him with a staircase to the floors below. "I'm going into the Forbidden Forest to seek out centaur healer advice for Persephone."  
  
"She's _sick_?" Briseis could have put her incredulity into that statement for a lot of different reasons, but she hushed when Harry glanced back at her.  
  
"It could happen," Harry said, and began to take the steps, carefully. He wanted to go faster, but Persephone was clinging to his shoulder and breathing like something was rattling in her chest. He didn't want to make her fall off and have to fly, or exert herself further than she already had.  
  
Once again, he cursed himself for being so ignorant of what exactly a black phoenix was like, and what they needed, and what Persephone was made of, other than fire and magic. He had had time and even a direction to look in after he escaped from Gorenson, but he had put the problem off, told himself it didn't matter as much as negotiating with the Veela and keeping the werewolves safe.  
  
Now, it had to matter.  
  
 _You're still a part of me,_ Harry thought, reaching up to cradle Persephone's head. Her beak was warm. _I'm the reason that you got created at all. I need to take better care of you._  
  
*  
  
Draco frowned and laid the message down on his desk. It had come by owl, as if it was an ordinary letter, but the contents weren't ordinary at all. Briseis telling him that Persephone was sick, and Harry had gone into the Forest to find healing for her...  
  
 _I hope this isn't like when Harry ran off and confronted the werewolf. He needs to think past his first impulse more often._  
  
"Sir. There are a few reporters outside now wanting to know what your official response to Tillipop's retirement is going to be."  
  
Draco sighed and turned around to face Rosenthal, standing on the opposite side of his desk. Well, if he didn't want the publicity, he shouldn't have chosen a career as a politician. There were good reasons to avoid it, the way that his father had advised him to.   
  
"Say that I am very sorry for him, of course," Draco dictated fluently, while his mind wandered with Harry through the pathways of the Forest. "Say that my thoughts are with him during this trying and difficult time. I'm sorry to hear of his fear, and I hope that he can recover his peace of mind in his retirement. Close with a hint about how this has elevated my own hopes for being Minister. Modestly, of course."  
  
"Very good, sir." Rosenthal finished scribbling and looked up. "Do we have a plan to handle Gorenson, when he moves?"  
  
"I think it a mistake to concentrate on him alone, when the entire Ministry council is likely to be more of a problem." Draco rubbed his hand across his forehead and sighed. "But an aggressive position might serve us well in this instance. Send a letter to the Ministry, addressed to the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Request the makeup of the council, and tell them that I'm anxious to work with them in any way possible."  
  
Rosenthal gave him a faint, approving smile, but it faded quickly. Draco observed her, then added, "What is it?"  
  
"I'm still trying to figure out what made Gorenson so suddenly ready to move." Rosenthal had her eyes closed, one hand groping out as if she would grip and shake the edge of an imaginary piece of paper. "It does seem sudden, doesn't it?"  
  
"It does, but I don't know what chance we have to get insight into his head."  
  
Rosenthal half-nodded. She seemed distracted, and Draco leaned forwards, trying to draw her attention. Rosenthal looked at him abruptly and said, "I may have a way to find out, calling on some of my old Ministry contacts."  
  
"Not if it puts you in danger," Draco said at once. She had already been through an attempt at blackmail, from which Harry had freed her, but only by binding her to him, so that she would be in trouble if she betrayed him. "I don't want you to have to go through the consequences of violating your binding to Harry." Rosenthal gave him another faint smile that didn't reassure Draco at all. "Will it?"  
  
"Not if I'm careful and ask the right questions, while seeming to promise more than I really intend to deliver." Rosenthal stood. "May I go now, sir?"  
  
Draco sighed. Yes, it had been strange when she called him by his first name, but he was starting to think that it had been preferable to this sort of distance she was trying to put between them. "Yes, go. But remember what I said about putting yourself in danger, and what Harry said about your oath to him."  
  
Rosenthal waved and went to the fireplace. Draco listened until he heard the whoosh of her flames and knew that the Floo had swallowed her.  
  
Then he leaned back to fret, and think, and wait.  
  
*  
  
Harry watched, narrow-eyed, as the chestnut centaur stepped away from Persephone. By now, she was sitting on the ground, unable to perch, her claws flexing in and out, and only clasping dirt. She still turned her head and seemed to recognize Harry when he bent down and spoke to her, but her eyes were so distant that Harry didn't know how she could see through the glaze on them at all. If she could pant, he thought, she probably would. But although she opened her beak now and then, and he saw her tongue, it remained still, with a white glaze of its own on it.  
  
"You know something." Harry didn't bother looking at the centaur he spoke to. He didn't see the point in taking his eyes off Persephone.  
  
The centaur stayed still. Harry darted him a sharp glance of dislike, and the centaur finally nodded and pawed the ground. "She is sick."  
  
"That, I knew already," Harry snapped, and reached down to pick up Persephone, cradling her against his chest. She leaned her neck against his, and half-spread her wings, but they drooped. Although she was so warm everywhere Harry touched her, she felt cold against him, and he couldn't remember the last time he had seen a shimmer of flame around her. He stroked her gingerly, not sure you could hug a bird the way you would a dog or a cat. "Tell me what's wrong with her."  
  
The centaur glanced over his shoulder. The cluster of centaurs behind him all nodded. Harry tried to hold onto his temper, since he didn't know what was going on and it could be something important, something that would help Persephone in the end.  
  
The chestnut centaur at last turned back to him and said, "She is more than sick. She is starving."  
  
Harry did have to stare at that, and shake his head. "But I let her hunt whatever she wants. And she hasn't been coming back with less food lately." He had kept a sharp eye on that, especially when she stopped leaving the corpses of small animals beside his pillow, but as far as he could tell, Persephone's food intake had stayed the same.  
  
The healer lowered his head further, his hoof all but digging a hole in the dirt. "She--she is a magical creature, Lord Potter."  
  
"Like you," Harry said, not seeing the point, although he had brought Persephone to the centaurs in the first place because he had thought they would know more about another magical creature than human Healers would.  
  
The centaur looked up, shaking his hair back like a mane. "No, Lord Potter. She is _born_ of magic, formed of it."  
  
"Does that mean that she can't survive without it?" Harry held up his arm and called some of his power, so that it danced around his sleeve in blue flames. "I can feed her anything she needs."  
  
The healer winced this time as if stabbed by Persephone's beak. "No, Lord Potter." Harry was getting tired of hearing that, but he held his peace. "It means that the circumstances of her _birth_ will determine what she needs to eat."  
  
"Dark magic?" Harry could do that. He had already cast some Dark spells; doing more was no problem, not if it would keep Persephone alive.  
  
The healer took a deep breath. "She came from flame and Dark magic, Lord Potter. But what was the first thing she ate after that?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth, but could say nothing.  
  
The healer nodded, speaking the answer that Harry couldn't bring himself to articulate, even in his head. "She fed on a human body, Lord Potter. She needs human flesh to survive. Or else she will starve to death, and even if she is renewed in fire, she will need a human sacrifice immediately after." He hesitated. "I believe that she weakened so quickly because her first meal was _dead_ flesh. Living would be better."  
  
Harry shut his eyes.  
  



	25. Recuperation

Harry carried Persephone tenderly back into his office. She was still shivering, and clinging to him so hard that he was a little startled that he didn't have claw marks in his arms. But her shivering stilled as he put her on the perch. As if knowing what her problem was, or knowing that he had heard it from the centaurs, had given her strength, she could perch now.  
  
Harry took a step back from her and gave her a measured look. Persephone opened one eye, looked at him, and closed it again. Harry touched the middle of her back, and she huddled close to his hand in turn.  
  
"I made you," Harry told her quietly. "I'm responsible for you. I can't let harm come to anyone else because of you, but--"  
  
Persephone opened one eye and chirped at him. It took a moment for Harry to realize why. Then he remembered Yaxley, and the people that Persephone could have hurt in the past, if she wanted to. She could even have attacked Gorenson. He smiled a little.   
  
"Yes, well," he said, pleased beyond description that Persephone was acting a bit more like her old self. "That doesn't really count. I mean, you weren't the one that killed Yaxley. Not exactly. And you haven't killed and fed on anyone. I would have known if you had."  
  
Another chirp, and Persephone tucked her beak into her feathers. Harry had thought she was sleeping a lot lately, but it was probably the best means she had of recovering her strength. He reached up and touched the perch beneath her feet once, to let her know he was there, and then turned away and walked to his desk.  
  
He was going to send out the letters that Briseis wanted him to send. Then he was going to start reading up on the appropriate magical theory calculations that would estimate exactly how much flesh Persephone needed. He had asked the chestnut centaur before they left the Forest, but the healer had only shaken his head. He had told Harry how to estimate it, though, and the best time to feed it to her.  
  
"Her burning day cannot be far away," the chestnut centaur had said, and this time he'd pawed the floor of the Forest for emphasis instead of fear. "The starvation is part of the weakening she endures towards it, the way a normal phoenix would begin to lose feathers." He had nearly swallowed his tongue when Harry glared at him over the way he had said  _normal_  phoenix, but had recovered enough to be going on with. "She will need to eat human flesh when she arises as a fledgling. It is, after all, what happened the first time."  
  
"I thought a phoenix's burning cycle was longer than this," Harry had said, still cradling Persephone close, while his gaze challenged the chestnut centaur to use the word "normal" again.  
  
The centaur had sought through his mind for the appropriate words, or at least Harry was almost sure he had, while Harry's hands continued to soothe Persephone, and she continued to almost pant. Then he had said, "Yes. Well. She emerged from the nothing to the flame, and then had a meal right away. It is not surprising that that meal would stamp its imprint on her." He had dragged his gaze from the leaf litter in front of his hooves and up to Harry's face. "And perhaps she would have been stronger and better able to endure a full burning cycle, if her first meal had been of living flesh rather than dead."  
  
Harry nodded, and told them farewell. He had walked back to the castle in a mood of desolate determination, but now, sitting down at the desk and starting to write letters from the instructions that Briseis had left him, he was calm.  
  
He was going to give Persephone the pound of flesh, or however much it was, himself, of course. There was no way that he could sacrifice any member of his court, those people who had come to him for protection and a better life than in the world outside. And he was not going to allow Persephone to feed on his enemies. He knew now she would be willing; her sweetness had been a symptom of her illness.  
  
But no, he would not do that. He had chosen to declare himself a Dark Lord because it was the only title he knew that would have some weight in the world outside Hogwarts. He had performed Dark spells because he had to, and he would continue to, if enemies threatened him or his people.  
  
But there were certain lines he would not cross. He could not abandon his responsibility to people who had taken the chance and trusted him.  
  
 _No more than I can abandon my responsibility to Persephone_.  
  
Harry stopped and closed his eyes for a second, rubbing his nose. Then he went back to his letters.  
  
On the perch beside him, Persephone crooned softly in her sleep. It sounded like a groan.  
  
Harry wrote a little faster.  
  
*  
  
"Hullo, Draco."  
  
Draco started and turned around. He thought at first that Rosenthal hadn't warned him of Harry entering through the Floo because she was still gone, trying to glean some information on Tillipop's retirement from her contacts in the Ministry. But no, Harry was walking towards him, and there was no fireplace in this little drawing room where Draco had chosen to sit. He must have simply walked through the wards around the Manor, the way he had when he first decided to visit Draco.  
  
His face looked more pale and tired than the news of Tillipop's retirement could account for. Draco was sure he must have heard about it by now, though. He stood up and came hesitantly around the desk, holding his hands out. "Harry? What's wrong?"  
  
Harry shook his head, opened his mouth as though he was going to dismiss Draco's concern, and then abruptly shut it again and swallowed. "Can I just hold you for a second?" he asked, holding his arms out first.  
  
Draco let Harry draw him close. Harry sighed into his hair, and his hands were tight in the middle of Draco's back. Draco waited as long as he could, until he thought the questions would tear him apart like rising steam, before he asked. "What's wrong?"  
  
Harry pulled back. "I found out today that Persephone is sick," he said. "Starving, according to the centaur healer who looked at her. She needs--she needs living human flesh to survive, because I was foolish enough to let her first meal be Yaxley's dead body. Well, I suppose that dead flesh would sustain her. But living would be better, according to the centaur." He looked away from Draco, towards the wall that he had come through. "I'm hardly going to give someone to her as a sacrifice, am I? So it'll have to be mine. And I spent all afternoon researching how much she would need, and how to take it off my body without bleeding to death, which of course I probably would if I tried to do this any other way." He swallowed. "I thought about transforming something into human meat for her, but I don't think it would be effective."  
  
Draco just stood there, stunned. Then he tugged Harry towards the couch he'd been sitting on. "We're going to sit down, and house-elves are going to bring us tea and those cakes that you like," he said. "And then you're going to repeat that."  
  
Harry laughed wearily and pulled him over to sit down. "I don't think I can put it much more clearly than I already told you," he said, and was silent while Draco snapped his fingers and gave their order to the house-elf who appeared. "I mean, that's it. I conjured a black phoenix out of nothing to protect me, and she's not like any other phoenix. I created a creature out of magic, and of course I have to pay the price to keep her alive. I can't ask anyone else to."  
  
"I still don't see why you can't feed her someone who displeases you," Draco said, playing a little, because he did know the reason, and he wouldn't have loved Harry so much if he had been any other way. "Someone like Gorenson."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Because he's going to be so obliging as to show up and let my black phoenix attack him, of course. No. This is the weakness that's going to overcome her as she gets near her burning day. The centaur healer thinks that had something to do with it, too. Maybe she'll always get weak like this near her burning day. She'll have to eat it on  _that_ day." He ran his hand through Draco's hair. Draco held still, hoping it comforted him. He liked being petted, of course, but that didn't seem to matter much right now, next to the demons Harry was struggling with. "I don't know how much time that is. A little. I can--I can investigate the spells instead of having to do it tomorrow, anyway."  
  
"Do you realize how remarkable you are?" Draco whispered, leaning towards him. "So many other people would just let her starve to death. They wouldn't give anyone up to her, maybe, but they wouldn't harm themselves, either."  
  
Harry snorted and gestured with one hand. "I highly doubt that many other people would have the bad luck or the stupidity to create a man-eating phoenix, either."  
  
"It wasn't stupidity," Draco said, because he remembered the moment when Harry had created Persephone, and he wouldn't let him call  _that_ stupid. "Unfortunate, maybe. Doubly unfortunate that she ate a corpse for her first meal. But not stupid. Not when you took a curse that would have killed you, turned your own magic against you, and made something as remarkable as that out of it." He leaned in further, his hands on Harry's shoulders so that neither of them would fall. Harry watched him with such skeptical eyes that Draco had to smile and kiss his nose. "It  _was_ remarkable. You really can't dispute that."  
  
"Remarkable in your sense of causing trouble for our enemies, maybe," Harry retorted, but he had relaxed a little. This time, when he lifted his head to receive Draco's kiss, there was nothing sad or reluctant about it.  
  
Draco kissed him so hard on the lips that Harry grunted and fell back on the couch, and they came near upsetting the tea-tray. Draco slid it away on the table with one foot and went back to the serious work of taking Harry's mind off things.  
  
It didn't hurt, of course, that Harry was right there helping Draco take his mind off anything but the way Harry's body felt under his fingers. Already their shirts were gone, and Harry hissed in a gratifying way as their naked chests pressed against each other. Draco shut his eyes and shivered. So strong, so warm.  
  
Harry rolled Draco beneath him on the couch, and bent over him to kiss his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his lips. Draco started and gasped beneath a kiss on his earlobe, and Harry paused to watch him with eyes that reflected the firelight.  
  
"What, that was a sensitive place?" Harry asked in pretended innocence. "Well, I didn't know  _that_." And he bent down and kissed it again.  
  
Draco cried out. Why should he pretend? He was with the man he trusted, loved, wanted. There was nothing to be gained from pretending to be less sensitive than he was, playing around or teasing, the way he might have with a more Slytherin lover. Harry was never going to use this against him.  
  
Except in the most delicious of ways, as he proved when he pinched Draco's nipples hard, when he kissed his other earlobe, when he found a place near Draco's collarbone which just dragging his tongue over made Draco flail. Draco had kind of intended to spend time in bed with Harry as a comfort to  _Harry_ , but already his resolve was fading, and his hands were falling limp, and he was letting Harry do anything he wanted.  
  
 _Oh, well,_ Draco decided, when he had a small moment to think about it more realistically.  _Harry is the kind of Gryffindor who gets pleasure out of bringing his lover pleasure, anyway_.  
  
After that, rational thought seemed really beside the point.  
  
*  
  
Harry lifted his head, panting and licking his lips. He'd had a hard time refraining from going straight to Draco's cock and sucking him off, but he had thought of something he'd prefer to do instead.  
  
He looked down at Draco, naked, while Harry was only half-naked, and smiled at him. It took a long moment for Draco to open his eyes, but he glared when he did. "Why did you  _stop_?" he whispered. There was a satisfactory amount of panting behind each word.  
  
"Because I want to see you come when I'm inside you," Harry said, and Draco arched and writhed against him, thrusting so hard between his hips that Harry had to bite his lip and lift himself up a little. Otherwise, he might have failed his own challenge.  
  
"Yes,  _please_ ," Draco whispered.  
  
Harry grinned at him and pulled his trousers down. He could fling them over there somewhere to join Draco's clothes. He thought they were in a corner of the room. It really didn't matter. What mattered  _most_ was getting naked to join Draco.  
  
And then it mattered that he could conjure lube on his fingers with a rub of those fingers and a wish for it, and Draco's eyes were laughing up at him as he tried to lift his arse and Harry tried to get to it, and their limbs tangled.  
  
"I'm sorry that the Manor isn't going to make this as comfortable for us as Hogwarts did," Draco whispered. "I don't have the kind of bond with the Manor that you do with Hogwarts."  
  
Harry wanted to tell him not to talk nonsense, but it occurred to him that he had a far more effective measure to shut Draco up, and his fingers in Draco's arse were it. He slid them inside, the lube easing the way, and Draco did indeed shut up. He also rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, and seemed to stop breathing for a second.  
  
It took quite a bit of squirming and grunting until Draco was ready for Harry's cock. Well, until Harry felt Draco was ready for his cock, anyway. Draco had been begging with his hips and his tongue, when he could assemble the words, for a few minutes by then.  
  
Harry slid back up the couch and into place. Draco's smile was warm for him, welcoming, enchanting. Harry took a moment to luxuriate in that. Not everyone had someone they could trust as much as he trusted Draco. Not everyone had someone they could be with.  
  
Then Draco made a noise like he would bite his own lip off, and Harry gave in to both their pleasure and slid into him.   
  
It still took a minute or two to adjust: the warmth around him, the way Draco's legs lifted and fell, the noises he made that now sounded like muffled mutters to hurry up, and Harry's own overwhelming sensations. He bowed his head, his hands braced on either side of Draco, and rode the pleasure until he was sure that he wouldn't come right away.  
  
That would disappoint him, sure, but it would disappoint Draco even more. And Harry never wanted to do that.  
  
He raised his head and met Draco's eyes. Draco grunted and mumbled back, then summoned a huge blast of breath and sense from somewhere and said, " _Move_!"  
  
Harry laughed and began to ride Draco.  
  
And the laughter was gone, in a blast of warmth that picked him up like a wave and carried him onwards, over Draco's grunts and gasps of delight, and into another world that surrounded Harry and lapped at him until he wanted to recoil, except that he was too busy thrusting to do that, and altogether he felt very good right now, and the only thing better than that was to make someone  _else_ feel good, and he reached down and slid a few fingers around Draco's length, and squeezed, and then Draco joined him, at least if the spasming of his body underneath Harry was any indication.  
  
Then they were gone, tumbling, lost in each other.  
  
And when Harry's mind returned to the present and the problem and Persephone, it no longer seemed overwhelming. If it wasn't easy, either, well, he already had a plan in place to deal with that.  
  
"Thank you," he breathed into Draco's ear. Draco seemed somewhere between asleep and unconscious with bliss, and Harry wasn't sure if he’d heard him.  
  
Draco's arms tightened around him, and Harry knew he had heard all that he needed to. 


	26. A Pound of Flesh

“There has to be some other solution.”  
  
Harry yawned and opened his eyes slowly. He hadn’t felt Draco withdraw from his side, but Draco was lying next to him now, a frown on his face, one hand touching and teasing and tracing over Harry’s bare ribs. Harry thought sleepily that Draco must have enlarged the couch in the night. It would have been too small for both of them to lie like this otherwise.  
  
“To what?” Harry picked up Draco’s hand from his ribs and brought it to his mouth. Draco’s breathing sped up as he watched his fingers slide past Harry’s lips, and Harry let them go with a smacking kiss for good measure.  
  
“To the problem of Persephone.” Draco’s eyes had closed, though, and he sounded as though he was talking about something small and unimportant, far away.  
  
Harry didn’t want to talk about Persephone. He knew Draco would try to come up with another solution, but there wasn’t one, really. Draco would think it was probably okay to sacrifice  _some_ people to Persephone, as long as they weren’t people Harry had made promises to.  
  
 _Or useful political allies. He’d probably balk at sacrificing those, too._  
  
Harry knew that that wasn’t really a choice, though, no more than the “choice” of feeding Persephone people near him was. His reputation as a Dark Lord was already fearsome enough. This would do even worse things to it. He would have to study the spells and make sure that he would survive the flesh he intended to cut off.  
  
But even there, he had an advantage. His magic could let him live through things that would kill anyone else.  
  
“No,” Draco murmured.  
  
Harry rolled towards him and raised an eyebrow. “What are you talking about now?” Draco looked as though he was still in some sort of sexual daze, and Harry was perfectly willing to have him there. He reached out with one hand and brushed it lightly over Draco’s knee. He was awake now, which meant that he could take more notice of Draco’s body and how much he wanted to devour it.  
  
Draco reached out and pushed his hand back, though, and his eyes were clear as he glared at Harry. “I said no to the notion that you would just tear off pieces of yourself and give them to Persephone. That’s not going to happen.”  
  
Harry blinked, once, twice. “Do you have a better solution?”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “You said it yourself. There are people in the Ministry who will never stop opposing you. Tillipop did, true,” he added, before Harry could say it, “but he’s a coward, and he was never physically in the forefront of the attacks on you. But what about Gorenson and the other Aurors? You have enemies who will never stop, who are relentless. The only way out is to destroy them.”  
  
Harry shook his head slowly. He had expected Draco to say something like this, but hearing it said was still a shock. “You can’t actually expect me to condone human sacrifice, Draco.”  
  
“I expect you to condone enemy sacrifice.” Draco didn’t move, except for his mouth. Even his eyes were steady, as if he had given up blinking. “I wouldn’t say this if you didn’t have enemies like Gorenson, if all your enemies were like Rosenthal used to be and could be talked around, or frightened into leaving you alone. But do you think the Ministry will ever leave you alone?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter whether they do or not. The only reason Gorenson captured me is that I stepped off the grounds of Hogwarts. When I’m on them, there’s nothing he can do to me. And in the meantime, I’m not going to do it.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because of who I am,” Harry said softly, “not who they are.” He reached up and traced a finger along the line of Draco’s mouth, marveling a little at how inflexible it was. “Draco, I love you, but there has to be a limit.”  
  
“A limit to your love, or a limit to what you’ll do because of that love?” Draco caught his wrist and looked down at him.  
  
Harry smiled with relief, glad that Draco understood the difference, and he wouldn’t have to explain it. Harry wasn’t good at speaking. He wasn’t sure that he  _could_ explain it. “The latter. I can’t—I don’t think you would want me to, in the end. Think about Voldemort feeding his enemies to Nagini. You wouldn’t want that.”  
  
Draco stayed still so long that Harry wondered if he was reconsidering his options. Then he sighed and folded himself around Harry like a snake seeking warmth, curling close to his side and draping his head across Harry’s shoulder. Harry stroked his hair, shutting his eyes at the softness. It felt so good; it soothed his fingers, as though he had been touching a hot pan for hours and needed the relief.  
  
“Maybe I wouldn’t want you to be,” Draco conceded, with something complex and difficult in the back of his voice. “That doesn’t mean that I want you to give in and take a piece of your flesh, either.”  
  
“Give in?” Harry smiled down into his hair, wondering if Draco could feel it. Maybe not, because he didn’t stiffen or turn away. “Who would I be giving in to? No one is making me do this.” He stroked the tension out of Draco’s shoulder when it showed up there, and Draco sighed and bowed and cuddled even closer.  
  
“Gorenson,” he muttered, but not softly enough that Harry couldn’t make out the shape of that familiar name. “Circumstances. All the people who want to make you over into someone who  _loses_ to them, someone who can’t come back from a defeat like this.”  
  
Harry shook his head, his chin stirring Draco’s hair this time. They were closer than Harry ever remembered being when they weren’t actually having sex. At Hogwarts, the school would have made the bed more comfortable for them, but Harry didn’t need that now, not when he held Draco’s breathing warmth. “I know that this might feel like Gorenson’s winning, but he couldn’t, not unless he managed to force me to abandon my commitment to my court and to Persephone. I’m free now, you know that, Draco. I’m free to do what I want, and I’m not afraid of Gorenson. I chose this because it’s the right thing to do.”  
  
“But he could have exhausted her when he captured her. Maybe her burning day wouldn’t be coming up so quickly if not for him.”  
  
Harry tightened his arms, and said nothing. He had explained as best as he could, and he knew that Draco would ultimately accept it, no matter how resistant he might be to the idea right now.  
  
Because there was nothing else to be done. That was the way it was.  
  
*  
  
Draco lifted his head. He had bidden farewell to Harry a few hours earlier, and let him go back to Hogwarts, as reluctant as he was to do it. He knew that Harry would keep working on his hideous plan to feed Persephone some of his flesh, and that meant he would be settling himself in his plans, too, confirming to himself over and over again that this was necessary.  
  
The problem was,  _he_ thought it was. Draco wasn’t convinced. If nothing else, he thought Harry could let Persephone die. She had been useful to him, but not so useful that he should sacrifice his reputation as a rare peaceful Dark Lord for her sake.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
And that was Rosenthal, whose entrance into the room had been the thing that made Draco look up in the first place, although it wasn’t enough to make him stop thinking about Harry. He shook his head and indicated that Rosenthal could sit down in the chair across from his desk. “Sorry. Did you manage to find out anything?”  
  
“Not any concrete plans,” Rosenthal said, taking her place and crossing her legs. She rubbed her hands a second later, and leaned closer to the fire, as if she needed the warmth to chase away some hidden inner cold. “But more than I thought I would.”  
  
Her face was pale, strained. Draco snapped his fingers and called up a house-elf, then glanced at Rosenthal. But she said nothing in particular, so Draco turned back to the elf and said, “Beef broth and tea. As soon as you can.”  
  
“I’m not sick,” Rosenthal muttered as the elf disappeared.  
  
“You didn’t express your own preferences in time.” Draco smiled at her, delighted to see a bit of the spark back in her eyes. “Now. What did you find out?”  
  
Rosenthal sat up straight. “More people wanted to talk about this council than I thought would,” she said. “None of them see it as a hopeful sign. They don’t think that no Minister should be elected, which was one of the things I feared. If we could court people who were dissatisfied with the way that Tillipop ran things, then of course the other side could do the same, and I thought they might have made them enough promises to take our allies away.”  
  
Draco was glad that he hadn’t thought about that, or not in detail. He had enough to worry about. On the other hand, worrying about things like this was Rosenthal’s  _job,_ really. He nodded neutrally instead, and asked, “Why are they unhappy about it? Only because they weren’t included in it?”  
  
Rosenthal shook her head. “The council is tight-knit. There are a few Unspeakables and people from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on it, but the kind who got where they are by relying on each other for favors. Not being beholden to other people.”  
  
Draco almost smiled. The Ministry was full of people who valued loyalty, but only a certain kind; being loyal to your friends instead of a lot of people who you would help in return for further favors was frowned upon. They were very Slytherin that way. “And could you confirm for certain if Gorenson is on it?”  
  
“I can confirm that someone whom everyone knows but no one will admit to knowing is there,” Rosenthal said quietly. “Someone with an enormous amount of power. Someone named Tenebrus Eliot. I said that I hadn’t heard the name, and everyone shifted around again and looked so distressed that I would have thought they were playing games with me, except I know who’s behind the mask. Yes, that’s Gorenson.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and nodded. Well, he hadn’t really thought that the matter would work out any differently. “So. You and I are going to have to lure Gorenson out into the open, make him react faster than he otherwise would.”  
  
The silence that followed was so thick that Draco knew it wasn’t just a reaction to his dramatic announcement, and he had to open his eyes again. Rosenthal was staring at him. “Just the two of us?” she whispered. “Why?”  
  
“Well, and the rest of my campaign, of course,” Draco relented. “But you have to admit that we are the leaders of it.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Draco sighed. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone this, but Rosenthal was under certain oaths that prevented her from betraying Harry, and if anyone on his side could know with safety—and he needed someone to know—she was the one. “Harry found out that Persephone is sick. Dying. The only thing that will revive her is eating a living human sacrifice on her burning day.”  
  
Rosenthal said nothing for long moments. Then she asked, “And the source of this information?”  
  
Draco smiled. “This is why I like working with you. You ask the important questions.”  
  
Rosenthal remained silent, and Draco nodded. “He took her to the centaur healers in the Forest. He thought they were more likely to understand what ailed a magical creature than any of the Healers in his court.”  
  
“If he has any,” Rosenthal muttered. “Not many of them want to leave St. Mungo’s.” She looked up. “Is this why you want to focus on forcing Gorenson into the open? Do you think he somehow controls or caused this illness?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “I think that he was right about Persephone being connected to Harry’s soul, but this seems like a natural consequence of the way she was made. As much as anything can be natural when it comes to Persephone,” he had to add. “But Harry is distracted now, and won’t be much support to us. Eventually, that’s going to get back to Gorenson. I think it’s likely that he has some way to spy on Harry. And he might think that’s the perfect chance to attack. Unless we harass him and give him something else to think about.”  
  
“I don’t know what we can do,” Rosenthal said.  
  
“You’ll have to go back to the Ministry,” said Draco. “But you can take as much money as you like. What I want is for you to find some evidence of Gorenson’s other identities. His past ones,” he added, when Rosenthal’s face pinched as though he had asked her to be the next sacrifice for Persephone. “It may not be obvious who he is at all times, but now that we know what to look for, we can add up mysterious and powerful people from the past who slipped away without a trace and had all this magical expertise that the Ministry was willing to pay them for. Or even  _likely_ names. If you can’t find exact proof, but you think that you can get what we need in other ways, then feel free to make things up.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded, still guarded. “Then what?”  
  
Draco smiled again. “When we have enough names, we send them to Skeeter.”  
  
Rosenthal smiled back, and they set about planning exactly how she would go back to the Ministry and how she would keep their interests there a secret from this new council. She didn’t seem to notice that Draco was less than fully committed to the discussion, given that he was turning over a different variation of the plan in the back of his head.  
  
It would be a good thing to give Gorenson a distraction, at least until Persephone was safely past her burning day and Harry recovered from whatever damage he had to inflict on himself to take the flesh and then heal from the wound. (Draco really had to wonder if Harry had considered that, how vulnerable he might leave his court by weakening himself).  
  
But if they could hurry Gorenson along and force him into the open  _before_ the burning day, or close to it…  
  
Harry’s determination to save Persephone was ruthless. So was his determination not to sacrifice anyone who had sworn loyalty to him, which Draco could understand.  
  
But Draco was as committed to Harry. And he had not given up on the idea of using an enemy for a sacrifice.  
  
*  
  
“Harry. What do you mean by this?”  
  
Harry popped his head up, gasping. He had fallen asleep over the books on his desk. He hadn’t known that sleep was creeping up on him like that.  
  
Hermione stood there with a hand on the fattest book, staring at him. Harry snuffled and wiped at his nose, then his mouth, hoping he hadn’t drooled. But he knew already that it was something worse than drool that made Hermione look at him like that.  
  
“What?” he asked, shrugging as casually as he could. “Some people like to have a nap in the middle of the day. And I’ve been working hard enough that I think I deserve it.”  
  
“You’re thinking about cutting someone up,” Hermione whispered.  
  
Harry glanced down. Hermione’s hand was on top of  _Surviving the Common Sacrificial Ritual._ Well, he supposed that did rather give the game away.  
  
“Myself,” he said, because there was no real way of softening this blow. “Sorry,” he added when Hermione paled, and raised a chair from the floor behind her. “Persephone needs human flesh to survive. I can’t ask anyone else to contribute. I’ll give her some of mine. I’d just like to survive the experience, that’s all.”  
  
Hermione swayed, then sat down. Harry had to smile. She trusted him to have a seat ready for her, to catch her, without even asking. She trusted him more than she used to. She wouldn’t walk away from the court now.  
  
 _If only because she doesn’t trust Briseis and Ron to keep me from doing stupid shit,_ he thought.  
  
“You’re sure of your information?” Hermione fixed her eyes on the books.  
  
“Centaurs,” Harry said. “And  _really_.” Maybe she  _didn’t_ trust him as much as he’d thought. “Would I be considering cutting myself up if I didn’t trust my sources?”  
  
Hermione swallowed through what sounded like an extremely dry throat and shook her head. “Tell me everything they said.”  
  
Harry was glad enough to do as she’d suggested. Blunt revelation out of the way, he had some practice in telling it, since he’d already revealed as much to Draco.  
  
And it did mean that he had someone who knew on his side now, someone who might be able to think up a way to get away with not feeding Persephone human flesh at all.  
  
Then he glanced at his phoenix where she drooped on her perch, her head wobbling back and forth as though she didn’t have the ability to hold her beak up, and his mouth hardened.  
  
 _No. Even if there was a way, I wouldn’t do it. I made her and I’m responsible for her, damn it._


	27. Other Solutions

  
“We have the soul here.” A pause that took a long moment to register in Harry’s ears, although not as long as it had taken him to realize that Madame de Lis was the one speaking. “My Lord.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and looked up from his notes on Persephone. He took a moment to reorient himself to the problems of the  _other_ magical creatures who occupied his court and were looking to him for a home, then nodded and put the book aside. “All right. Have you put it in a room somewhere that I should go and see?” He knew he hadn’t felt the change in Hogwarts’s wards that should have resulted if they brought a different kind of being that had never been here before into the castle, but then, he hadn’t been concentrating on anyone except Persephone for the last day.  
  
“It is still outside the wards.” Madame de Lis watched him closely enough that Harry tried to muster up a smile. She would expect him to be attentive to more things than just his phoenix, even if the Veela felt some sympathy for Persephone because they were both from the stocks of magical birds. “Would you still like to see it?”  
  
“Yes. I would.” Harry rose to his feet and neatly squared the notes on his desk. Persephone was asleep on her perch at the moment, and showed no sign of either rousing or wanting to follow him, which was good. Harry thought the fewer people who saw her symptoms of weakness and recognized them for what they were, the better.  
  
He followed Madame de Lis through the corridors, aware that some of the people of his court bowed and murmured when they saw him, and that others openly stared. Harry ignored both kinds of “tribute.” He didn’t care. He wanted to get back to his office and continue to research solutions for Persephone as soon as possible. Hermione had helped him with some Arithmancy equations that were supposed to tell him how much flesh he could safely cut off and survive. They were getting close to an answer.  
  
And then Harry would only have to wait for her burning day.  
  
He lengthened his stride as they came out of the entrance hall, not caring for the way Madame de Lis minced along. Harry ignored the murmur of Hogwarts beneath and behind him, too, stone caressing his feet, warmth trying to rise through the floors to his defense. He loved Hogwarts, yes, he was bonded with it, but it couldn’t do a thing to help him with Persephone. And that was the problem that consumed him right now.  
  
The distance between the edge of the wards and the doors of the castle had never seemed so long, or a smile so hard to hold on to. Harry summoned all his patience and made it walk with him and cling to his face so that no one would see him and know what was wrong.  
  
Except the people who already did, like Hermione and Ron, and who were part of the anxious crowd gathered around the portable soul the Veela had brought. Harry paused when he saw it, then came on more slowly, trying to clear all the preconceptions from his mind.  
  
It did resemble a tree, in some ways. It looked like a dry little stick that had a cluster of leaves at one end, or maybe like a huge piece of celery. Harry examined it attentively. The leaves were the deep green of the Forest in summer. Harry looked at Madame de Lis. “Is it all right if I touch it with my magic?”  
  
Madame de Lis had opened her mouth for what Harry suspected would probably be a denial, but when she heard what he’d said, she hesitated and closed it again. Then she jerked her head down in a sharp motion. “I cannot deny you the right to do that, I suppose,” she said. “You will want to make sure that we do not bring something dangerous within your wards.”  
  
Harry let her think that if she wanted. In truth, he was more curious about what the soul would feel like than anything else.  
  
He stood where he was, and thought of Hogwarts deeply rooted behind him, and Persephone containing part of his soul. He thought of how deep the one was, and how strong the other, and took some of that strength and honed it down to a thin filament, something that would tell him a lot about the soul but touch it gently. Then he reached out.  
  
For a moment before he connected with the soul, he thought there was a shimmer surrounding it, a golden and blue coruscating aura like the kind that Hermione had tried so hard to learn to see a few years ago.  
  
Then his magic touched the soul’s, and he felt as though he had become rooted, not in Hogwarts, but in rich and crumbling earth.  
  
He felt it, then. How a tree survived, how it felt the sap run through it like blood, how it reached to the sun and flowed into the ground with its roots at the same time, how it changed all the time without movement. How it leaned on the wind, and leaned on something else beyond it, those changeable souls of its who moved around. The blossoming they would do, together.  
  
The blossoming was between the tree and the Veela. The blossoming was everywhere, and if he could wait long enough and listen long enough, he would break out into blossom himself.  
  
Harry wrenched himself free of the connection with an indignity that he thought must be visible on his face, although he didn’t do more than take one staggering step backwards. He shook his head and glanced at Madame de Lis. “Do you really both blossom at the same time?” he asked. He couldn’t remember seeing any Veela walking around with flowers in their hair, although it might explain why Madame de Lis was named after a flower.  
  
“Oh, yes,” said Madame de Lis, in a voice that made Harry eye her intently. But she didn’t sound smug or glad that he had staggered that way. She was watching the tree, and although it still looked like nothing from the outside—no trace of the intense life Harry had brushed against—she still smiled at it. “Not in the literal way for Veela, of course. But when the tree is in blossom, we are more likely to discover our mates, the other part of our souls. And we may be more likely to have children, if we are paired to someone who can give us children. And we are sometimes more likely to have new ideas, and start new projects.” She glanced at him. “I wanted to wait to come here until the souls were blossoming and the ideas seemed more deeply rooted. But other people convinced me it would not be a good idea.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to ask who those people were, and then closed it again. For all he knew, those Veela hadn’t even come to Hogwarts, or he wouldn’t know them if they had. He was just supposed to make a decision about whether this particular portable soul was dangerous or not.  
  
He nodded briskly and turned back to the soul. It rustled its leaves in the wind, and swayed back and forth a little. Harry wondered if it was already digging roots in. He hoped not. They would have to dig it up again to plant it under Hogwarts. “It’s fine. Bring it in.”  
  
Madame de Lis gave him a smile that would have annoyed him under other circumstances. It was too triumphant. But Harry had other things to worry about than a bit of triumph, and he remained supreme within Hogwarts. If the portable souls started causing trouble for him, along with the Veela, he could bring the full power of his bond with Hogwarts down on them and force them out that way.  
  
“Does that mean that you have considered our request for sanctuary and found it not wanting?” Madame de Lis murmured, casting her eyes down to the ground.  
  
Harry sighed and paused, rubbing his forehead. Sometimes it was hard to remember why he had wanted to bond with Hogwarts and declare himself a Dark Lord in the first place. Constant, constant politics, constant decisions on matters that people were always asking him to make when he was tired and off-guard.  
  
 _Of course they do,_ he knew Hermione and Draco would say.  _They know that they stand the best chance of getting something out of you if they can do it then._  
  
Harry bit back the harsh response he wanted to give to his own conscience, and nodded briskly to Madame de Lis. “You can come here. You cannot use allure on any member of my court, or on me, or the people in the Forest and Hogsmeade who are living under my protection. If I hear that you’ve charmed anyone into doing something for you that they didn’t want to do, then that Veela will be cast out of my court and the rest of you placed on sufferance. Do you understand?”  
  
Madame de Lis’s eyes were a little wide. Harry felt a trickle of some strange enjoyment move through him; it was hard to identify it as political enjoyment, even though that was probably what it was. She had thought that she would get everything she wanted  _because_ she had caught him off-guard, and it was a shock to her that he was still coherent enough to demand some things.  
  
“But what if someone uses their charm or allure without meaning to?” she demanded. “Are you going to insist on questioning everyone who does something nice for one of us, to make sure that they had their free will when they did it?”  
  
Harry met her gaze. “If that’s what it takes.  _Encourage_  your people to restrain their allure and their charm. There are better ways of getting what they want.”  
  
Madame de Lis looked away from him, but a few other Veela were ready to take her place, perhaps from having heard their conversation. A young female Veela leaned forwards aggressively. Harry just looked at her. His head was full of Persephone, and of Draco, if he concentrated and needed to have a reason to think about sex with someone. She just couldn’t compete with either one of them.  
  
“We are not always in control of our allure,” said the Veela, with an accent a little heavier than Madame de Lis’s. “Do you intend to punish us if our control on it slips?”  
  
Harry smiled at her, and had the impression it was an unpleasant smile from the way that she stepped back from him and lifted her arms as if to shield others from his sight. Well, he couldn’t help that. So far, the Veela had contributed little to his court while being a great deal of trouble.   
  
“Maybe you didn’t need to control yourself when you were living in France,” he said. “If you spent all your time around your own kind and you didn’t have any normal humans to charm. But you tried to use your allure on me the minute you arrived here, which suggests that you also regard it as a weapon.  _Learn_ the control. I’ve said you can live in my court even after you lied and tried to twist the truth. Don’t make me regret granting the permission.”  
  
The young Veela looked a little shaken, but also as though she was thinking about what he had said. Harry hoped so. He didn’t want to deal with this nonsense forever. He started to turn away.  
  
“Lord Potter?”  
  
Harry restrained a snap, with an effort. He wanted to be back in his office working on Persephone and his notes. “Yes, what?” he asked, not turning around but waiting until the Veela who’d spoken stepped in front of him.  
  
She looked young and scared, and a little familiar. She bit her lip and looked at me. “Do you remember me?” she asked. “I just arrived from France yesterday. I’m—I’m Gabrielle Delacour.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly, trying not to show his surprise. He had sort of assumed that anyone of Fleur’s family who wanted to come to Britain would stay with her first, and only contact him if they wanted to stay longer and the Ministry was watching the Weasleys too closely. “Yes, I remember you.”  
  
Gabrielle seemed to stand up a little straighter after that. At least she didn’t do something stupid like flutter her eyelashes at him or blast him with the allure. That meant there were  _some_ smart Veela among this delegation, and maybe Harry wouldn’t regret giving them his permission to live at Hogwarts after all. “Good. Um. I did want to say thank you for letting us live here, and make sure that you know some of us can be in control.”  
  
Harry restrained a shrug. He thought Gabrielle was trying to be friendly, but he didn’t give that much of a shit, not when Persephone was dying. “You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”  
  
Gabrielle plunged ahead then, as if afraid of him walking away. “I think I might be able to help with your bird.”  
  
Harry paused, and Gabrielle flinched a little. Maybe she could feel the magic poised around him, crackling. Maybe Fleur had told her stories. “What do you mean?” he asked softly. “What do you think is wrong with her?”  
  
Gabrielle lifted her head. “I work with the souls like the one we brought today,” she said. “I don’t have a mate yet, and that’s the kind of thing the tree-souls need, someone who’s unmated working with them. I can see the connections between souls and—and different kinds of souls. Souls in human bodies, and souls outside them.”  
  
Harry was silent, his mind working. Maybe she had recognized Persephone as joined to his soul, the way that Gorenson had said, but he didn’t want to give too much away in case it  _wasn’t_ that and Harry was leaping to conclusions.  
  
“She looks like a tree-soul that is sick,” said Gabrielle, and clasped her hands together in front of her waist, giving him a little bow. “I think that I might know a different solution, whatever you are contemplating could be dangerous, will you let me take a look at her?” The last sentences were all said together as one breathless sentence.  
  
Harry favored her with a long, slow, freezing stare, and Gabrielle flinched a bit, but didn’t back down. In fact, she seemed to stand taller under it, as if that was the kind of challenge she needed to break her free of restraint. She didn’t say anything else, but waited there like someone who was confident that he would say yes.  
  
Harry fought hard not to just close his eyes and give in because he was exhausted. He had tried and tried, but he still thought the best solution would be something that disgusted both Draco and Hermione, and even him, if he thought too much about it. The solution was not thinking much about it, just doing it. The Arithmancy calculations said about a pound of flesh would be enough. No more than two pounds. It wasn’t that great a sacrifice, was it, when it came to the bird that he was responsible for bringing into existence? If he hadn’t wanted this to happen, he should have thought harder about what having her feed on Yaxley would mean, instead of doing it as a kind of sweeping publicity gesture.   
  
And on top of that, Gabrielle had just revealed Persephone’s weakness in front of people that Harry didn’t trust. He hadn’t wanted many people to know Persephone was sick at all, never mind  _these_  people.  
  
On the other hand, there wasn’t any harm in letting Gabrielle look Persephone over, as long as Harry made sure that he was in the room when she did it.  
  
“Fine,” he said abruptly. “Come with me. I don’t think you can do any harm.” He would make sure of  _that_.  
  
Gabrielle bobbed what looked like a cross between a bow and a curtsey, and followed him swiftly back into the castle. Harry did wind a tendril of magic down into the ground, and use that to open an unobtrusive pair of eyes on the castle gates so that he could watch Madame de Lis. If she was smiling or smirking, that might be a sign that this plea of Gabrielle’s was a plan of hers.  
  
But Madame de Lis only looked thoughtfully as she joined the crowd of Veela hovering around the tree-soul. Thoughtful, and a little stunned.   
  
Well. Harry could live with that.


	28. Entwined

  
Draco turned the parchment over in his hand, and then put it down on the desk and contemplated it. Really, he almost had to congratulate Gorenson on the way he’d sent it—assuming it was Gorenson, and at this point, Draco had no other enemy that he thought would react in this way.  
  
The owl who had delivered it had been a snowy owl, but such a pale variety, with silver dashes at the edges of its wings and eyes that had more yellow in them than gold, that Draco knew he was looking at what some people called a “ghost” owl. They flew more silently than any normal bird, and this one had flown through Draco’s fireplace instead of his window or doors. It had dropped the parchment on Draco’s desk and soared back out again with the same utterly silent beat of its wings.  
  
Draco knew people that would unnerve. He wondered for a moment if Gorenson believed he was one of them, or simply chose any advantage he could to try and unnerve his enemy.  
  
Then he snorted. If he had to ask that question seriously, then he was the one who didn’t know Gorenson.  
  
He cast the usual spells on the parchment, although even when delivered by a ghost owl, he thought his wards would react if a cursed object came anywhere near them. The investigation produced nothing, and at last Draco thought it safe to pick up the letter and, in a way, admire it. It had a faint shine around it, a glow of light that Draco regarded with an indulgent eye. That was probably meant to make it look more enticing, and make someone grab it.  
  
Gorenson did have some good psychological tricks. It probably came from moving from identity to identity and Department to Department in the Ministry for so long.  
  
Draco slit the envelope open, to find not only a piece of paper but a ring inside. He cast the same spells he had used on the letter in general on the ring, patiently and attentively. Gorenson shouldn’t think that Draco would run out of patience to play this game. Draco could go for a long, long time before he got tired of it.  
  
The ring was a simple band of some darkish purple material. Draco’s spells didn’t show anything special about it, either magically or otherwise. Draco still laid it on the desk in front of him as he read the letter.  
  
 _Mr. Malfoy,_  
  
 _I know that you, along with much of the rest of the Ministry, and indeed the British wizarding world, are convinced that the Unspeakables have hidden away many valuable artifacts and are hoarding them for themselves. I hoped to show you that, under certain circumstances, we can share them with people we deem suitable caretakers. This ring is one of them. It is the ring that was worn by Merlin, and stolen by Nimue when she confined him in the cloven oak. Or so one legend says. It is certainly ancient, and very old. It will grant you a single wish._  
  
Draco lowered the letter and stared at the ring, lying innocently in the center of the desk. He had heard of artifacts that had wishing magic built into them not responding to spells that would detect magic, because their makers had wanted to hide them, but…He rushed back to the letter.  
  
 _I know that you might wonder why I am sending it, when you could simply pick it up and wish me dead. But I am a gambler by nature, or I would not be in politics, and I choose to gamble that you have more important things to wish for than seeing me dead. You might choose to wish for the triumph of your lover, or for yourself to become Minister, or for all opposition to simply vanish._  
  
Draco gave a breathless snort. And did Gorenson really think that Draco wouldn’t include  _him_ in that opposition that he wanted to vanish?  
  
 _You should know, however, that there is a restriction on the use of the ring. Use it once, and only once. You will also have to pay a price for it. It will take away what you most love._  
  
 _I wish you luck._  
  
 _One Man._  
  
Draco put the letter down and stared at the ring again. There was always the chance that Gorenson was completely lying, of course, that this was just a chance to fuck with him, and the ring had no special properties, the way that Draco’s wand had reassured him that it didn’t.  
  
There was always the possibility. But Draco had heard of wish rings like this before, or at least artifacts that resembled it. They weren’t always rings.  
  
As if compelled, Draco picked up the ring again and turned it over. It sparked and shone in the pale light from the lamp. It felt ordinary on his palm, as cold as any metal would be that hadn’t been touched by human skin in a while. Or which had flown through cold night air in an envelope clutched by an owl.   
  
Draco tumbled the ring over once more, then dropped it on the desk and sat back, shaking his head. No. He wouldn’t think about this. He wouldn’t obsess over it. There was also the chance that that had been Gorenson’s main ploy in sending it, to distract Draco and make him less focused on the campaign and protecting Harry. After all, it was a variation of what Draco was already planning to do to him, and Draco hadn’t ever thought Gorenson was stupid.  
  
He put the ring resolutely in the drawer of his desk, and then locked it with another wave of his wand, and turned back to what he had been doing before the ghost owl interrupted him, which was studying the first batch of notes Rosenthal had sent him from the Ministry. He had a round dozen names that could be Gorenson’s, and at first he had thought he would pick through them for the likeliest candidates and release those. But the longer he looked at them, and the more he thought about the ghost owl and the ring and the taunting nature of the note, the more steadily a new plan took shape in his mind.  
  
He leaned back and studied the paper. Rosenthal had included the note at the top that none of these were the names of real people, as far as she could determine, simply the names of people who weren’t currently on record as working at the Ministry, but were on the files as having existed at one time. Some of them might be the identities of Aurors working undercover or spies instead of Gorenson.  
  
But either way…  
  
Why not release  _all_ of them? The flood of information, which would probably include at least some of the real thing, would put Gorenson off, tease him, tip him off-balance, the way he was trying to do to Draco with the ghost owl and the ring. Those to whom such tactics were a good idea were often vulnerable to the same thing themselves.  
  
With a smile that even he suspected was sadistic, Draco sat back to write the perfect letter to Rita Skeeter.  
  
*  
  
“I’ve never seen a soul so sick.”  
  
Harry fought not to close his eyes. He had to be strong for Persephone’s sake, bedraggled and shivering on her perch under Gabrielle’s gentle touch. To Harry’s relief, Persephone showed no sign of trying to eat  _her_ , maybe because Gabrielle wasn’t fully human.  
  
Or it could be that Persephone was too weak even to snap. Harry was really afraid that it was the last, especially with the way that Gabrielle had spoken her last, solemn words.  
  
“Can you see what I need to do to make her better?” he asked.  
  
Gabrielle glanced at him, and then went back to circling around Persephone’s perch. So far, she hadn’t touched Persephone, instead just hovering her hands and letting her fingers barely brush the air over Persephone’s feathers. “I think I know one thing,” she said. “But you aren’t going to like it.”  
  
“Let her eat human flesh?”  
  
Gabrielle was astonished enough to drop her hands and turn to face him. “How did you know…”  
  
“The centaurs told me.” Harry sighed and sat down behind his desk. Letting Gabrielle investigate hadn’t been a bad idea, but she had told him nothing he didn’t already know. “They said that she had fed on human flesh not long after the moment of her creation, so she had to do the same thing now. But it won’t be until her burning day. That means that I have some time to study how to survive.” He gestured to the books on his desk. Gabrielle followed his gaze, but still looked puzzled, so Harry elaborated. “I’m going to cut the flesh off myself. I can’t ask someone else to do it.”  
  
“But you  _can’t_.”  
  
Harry looked up, and let his magic flare. Gabrielle spread her hands as if she might fall, although the floor had only rocked slightly.  
  
“Do you think you can tell  _me_ what to do?” Harry asked, shaking his head. “Believe me, I’m fully aware of all the consequences of what could happen. That doesn’t mean that you get to tell me that I can’t do it. You’re only living here on sufferance so far, and while I think you’re genuinely trying to help me, that’s not true of some of the other Veela who came with you. So  _lay off_.”  
  
Gabrielle swallowed and stepped back, gaze so wary that Harry did feel a little bad. But she didn’t retreat. “I just wanted you to know that consuming your flesh won’t help her,” she said.  
  
Harry lowered his hands, and his magic. In fact, everything went so quiet that Gabrielle glanced around as though she thought  _that_ might mean her destruction was imminent. “What are you saying?” he whispered.  
  
Gabrielle focused on him. “She’s your creation, made mostly of your magic. She can’t eat you. It would be like eating herself. It would weaken her rather than strengthen her. She would use up more energy taking from herself, and you, than she would gain from the consumption.”  
  
Harry turned away and walked to the far side of the room. He had to look out the window of the office, and remind himself that people who brought him bad news weren’t always out to hurt him. “What do you mean? How can you know this? The centaurs didn’t mention anything about this.”  
  
“I don’t know if they thought that you intended to feed her  _yourself_.” Gabrielle’s voice was thin and angry. Then she paused and added, “But they also might not have known how to look for it. Most Veela wouldn’t, either. I only saw it because I have experience tending the tree-souls, and I’ve seen sick ones before.”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. “Explain it to me.”  
  
Gabrielle’s voice stumbled a little, but she sounded as if she was doing her best. “It’s—a Veela has a soul in multiple parts, outside their bodies and inside. One part is inside the mate, which is how a Veela recognizes a mate in the first place. It’s a soul-connection, but not to the whole soul. And part of our souls comes from the places where we live, and the trees. It’s like the whole soul is only made when all those things are in place, and until we meet our mates and establish our homes, with the trees, then we only have part of a soul.” She paused. “I’m not explaining this well.”  
  
“I’m familiar with the theory of split souls,” Harry muttered, his shoulders tightening the way they so often did when he remembered Voldemort. “What I don’t understand is how you can still be sane and normal like that.”  
  
“Oh, well, for a Veela it  _is_ normal.” Gabrielle sounded relieved, as if she had assumed that he was going to ask her something else. “For a human, it isn’t. Even if they’re a Veela mate, they’re carrying an extra piece of soul around, not lacking one.” She hesitated. “And that’s part of the reason Persephone is sick.”  
  
“Explain,” Harry told the window. He hadn’t practiced speaking like a cold, evil Dark Lord, but at the moment he thought he sounded like one.  
  
Luckily, Gabrielle wasn’t too frightened to speak. “She’s part of your soul, stretched outside your body. That’s not a natural state for  _any_ human. She’s fighting to come back to you, but at the same time, she’s fighting to draw the rest of your soul towards her. It’s this…cycle. I don’t really understand it. I can see it, but it’s like the energy is always flowing back and forth, and sometimes it belongs more to her and sometimes more to you. It can’t meet in the middle since there  _is_ no middle. Maybe that’s why we have three parts of our souls. It’s more stable than two, and so we can flow back and forth and rest in different parts if something happens to us. But you don’t have three parts like anchors, you have two…”  
  
Harry turned around when she didn’t go on, and she swirled one hand in the air. “What do you call it when there are two things, they’re separate, things travel back and forth between them? The word?”  
  
It took Harry himself a while to decide what she was talking about, but finally he asked, “Poles?”  
  
Gabrielle nodded vigorously. “That’s what it’s like. You are drawn to each other, and repel each other.” She sneaked a glance at Persephone, who was crouched down in the middle of her perch with her feathers so fluffed out around her that it looked like she’d doubled in size. “And I don’t know what to tell you to get you back to normal. It’s not stable. Feeding her your flesh won’t help.”  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said.  
  
Gabrielle turned to him again. “I’m sorry it’s not good news,” she said. “If you would let me stay a little longer, then I could try to look at her again, and you again, and see if there’s something that would help. But I can’t see it right now.”  
  
“Thank you,” Harry repeated, and this time, she finally seemed to take note of the dangerous undertones in the word. She flushed a little, inclined her head to him, and scampered out of the office. Listening through the stones in the floor and walls, Harry could tell the moment when she burst into a run.  
  
Which left Harry alone with Persephone, and his problem.  
  
He crossed the distance between his desk and her perch, and reached out to stroke the feathers in the middle of her back. Persephone opened one eye, but even that made it seem as if she was struggling against an enormous weight. She snapped at him weakly and bowed her head again, neck swaying like a pendulum.  
  
Harry couldn’t have seen it himself, not without Gabrielle’s special talents, and he didn’t know that he would have been able to describe it the way she did even if he could. But he knew exactly what this was.  
  
He had created Persephone out of the cycle of his own magic trying to destroy him. Yaxley had cast a spell that turned Harry’s own magic against him. Since Harry was so powerful, that had meant that pulling on his magic to defend him was only fueling his own destruction. But he had managed to set up a cycle by channeling a lot of that power into Persephone. She was a creature who burned and died in a cycle, and that had seemed the best solution to the problem.  
  
But now that he thought about it, he must have put more than his magic into Persephone. He had probably put part of his soul, too, which was the reason she had her own thoughts and will and moved about independently of his desires. So it was no wonder that the whole situation was unstable. The cycle couldn’t turn in circles, the way that Harry had thought it would. It was just wavering back and forth between him and Persephone, the magic that should have cycled fighting the stretched piece of soul that kept trying to come home, and the whole thing was a mess.  
  
Gabrielle was right. Trying to take pieces of flesh off his own body wouldn’t work. It would be like calling up his magic to fight Yaxley’s spell had been. All that would happen was tossing more kindling on the fire, only this time all the kindling would burn up instead of coming back to him.  
  
Then Harry paused.  
  
It was hard to remember those moments in the fire of his own magic, when he had tapped into the Dark Arts spell that Yaxley had cast and flung it back and forth like a ball tossed from hand to hand, when he had come up with the idea to create Persephone. But he remembered that thought about the cycle, and the way that the best thing to do would be to create a phoenix.  
  
He had done the wrong thing by letting Persephone eat Yaxley immediately afterwards. He had caused all this.   
  
But there was something to those ideas…  
  
Harry walked over to his desk and moved some of the Arithmancy calculations that Hermione had helped him with out of the way. Then he settled down and reached for one of the books on phoenixes that Hermione had pulled from the library. They had helped not at all with the idea of a phoenix that ate human flesh, because there had never been one before.  
  
But there had been lots of information about burning days and cycles in there.  
  
Harry opened the book, and began to read. He was trying to be cautious, gentle, not frightening away the idea he’d had before it had the chance to mature.  
  
But inside him, hope had begun to beat like a heart.


	29. Inside the Court

“You don’t look well-prepared for this, sir.”  
  
Rosenthal’s voice was so neutral that she might have been commenting on the color of his robes. Then Draco, looking into the mirror and seeing the calm, flat way she even  _stood_ behind him, winced a little. No, she would show more passion if she was talking about the color of his robes. After all, they might signal something wrong to the wrong person if they didn’t take care.  
  
“I know that. I’m worried about Harry,” Draco said simply. And also about the information that Rosenthal had brought back from the Ministry, which showed that more people were on Gorenson’s side than Draco would have thought possible, but mostly about Harry.  
  
Rosenthal grimaced a little, but not so fleetingly that Draco’s eye didn’t catch it in the mirror. He raised his eyebrows at her, and stepped back from the glass, turning to face the entrance that would take him out onto the Manor grounds. The wards had been reinforced so that no one was getting through them without Draco’s express permission.  
  
 _Except Harry, if he wants to come. And maybe Gorenson, if he really is an Unspeakable using all sorts of artifacts that we don’t know about._ But he wasn’t going to say that aloud, either.  
  
“I don’t see a reason to be worried about Lord Potter.” Rosenthal would never go so far as to fold her arms, but she had her head turned away, listening to the noise of the crowd gathering on his grounds, and her shoulders were a bit hunched. “This isn’t the first time that he hasn’t returned your Floo calls.”  
  
“Yes, I know,” Draco said, and then drew in a long breath and held it. He wasn’t going to explode on Rosenthal. With some effort, he smoothed his breathing out and nodded to her, mouth worked into the cheerful smile that most of his visitors would expect, since he had sensitive information on an enemy. “This is just the way we’ll have to be. Focused on what’s in front of us. Right?”  
  
Rosenthal’s frown flitted across her face again, but she nodded. “Yes, sir.” She drew out a piece of parchment. “Do you want the list of names?”  
  
Draco nodded and held out his hand. He hadn’t bothered to memorize the list. He was going to throw out names in random order, and watch the crowd’s reaction. Gorenson might not have bothered sending a spy, knowing that everything Draco said at a conference like this would be all over the newspapers within an hour, but he wanted to see if anyone jumped at the names.  
  
If nothing else, it might be amusing.  
  
He took one more minute to check the hang of both his robes and his smile in the mirror, and then turned to face the door.  
  
 _We both have to focus on what’s in front of us, Harry. I just hope to hell that you know what you’re doing._  
  
*  
  
“You can’t mean to do this, Harry.” Hermione’s voice was low, her eyes wet and frightened. “This is  _crazy_. You know it is.”  
  
“As crazy as cutting off bits of myself?” Harry turned his head and arched his eyebrows, and had the satisfaction of seeing Hermione bow her head in front of him.  
  
And it  _was_ satisfaction, yes. Harry could feel that dark emotion moving within him, perhaps not appropriate towards one of his best friends, but real. He had come up with this solution. He had taken advantage of what he knew that no one else did, the feeling of the magic that had created Persephone from the inside. He knew that it would work in the same way that he knew that he was bonded with Hogwarts, in the same way that he felt the breath in his lungs moving in and out, in the same way that he knew where his feet were when he was walking.  
  
He might go down struggling madly against some of his own fears, but he would at least struggle.  
  
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” Hermione was pacing back and forth in front of his desk now, wringing her hands together. Ron watched from the far corner, his arms behind his back, his face so calm that Harry found it difficult to tell what he was thinking of. Honestly, he had almost forgotten Ron was there in the chaos of Hermione’s reaction. “You know that it’ll mean speeding up her burning day. And you were counting on having some extra time to build up your plans—”  
  
“When I was still planning on cutting off bits of myself,” Harry interrupted. He wouldn’t let Hermione forget what the alternative to his new plan was. “And even then, I didn’t know when she was going to burn, so I still had to suffer the torments of uncertainty.” He smiled a little when he saw Hermione give him an annoyed glance for the elevated language, in the middle of everything. “This way, I can choose my own time, and have it happen on a day that isn’t a full moon, and isn’t a day when I have to meet with a delegation, and isn’t a day that I need to interview someone to enter my court. Hell, I can even schedule it for a weekend so that classes aren’t in session.”  
  
Hermione came to a stop as though he had slapped her, but Ron was the one who asked the obvious question. “You’re going to do it  _this_ weekend, mate?”  
  
Harry nodded. “I think so. Now that I understand what I need to do, there’s no good reason to put it off.” He turned and stared at Persephone, tucked into herself, head and neck and wings all folded, body hunched over her gripping talons. “She’s suffering. I don’t want her to hurt more than she needs to.” He saw Hermione nod from the corner of his eye, but Ron frowned a little, as though remembering that Persephone had caused plenty of people to suffer, or would have, if she could.  
  
But that was the point. She would have caused them to suffer if she  _could_. But she hadn’t. And if Harry was right about the cycle and the magic that he needed to pour into it, then he would be able to prevent her from eating anyone again.  
  
“Where are you going to do it?” Ron had evidently decided against trying to talk Harry out of it.  
  
“In the Great Hall.”  
  
This time, Hermione was the one who snapped, “ _Impossible_ ,” while Ron was the one who frowned. “How are you going to keep people out?”  
  
Harry relaxed enough to grin at her. “Who was telling me the other day about the level of control I have over my subjects in my court, to the point that a lot of them leap to obey me? And I’m bound to the walls of Hogwarts. They might grumble about my safety, but they’ll obey me. I can seal off all the entrances to the Great Hall if I need to.”  
  
“Why?” Ron asked quietly, before Hermione could say what she thought of that. Something scathing, Harry knew, from the way she opened her mouth.   
  
“Why there?” Ron nodded. Harry stood up and crossed to the window, pausing beside Persephone’s perch as he did. She was too sick even to shiver. Harry sent a tendril of warmth up through the floor of Hogwarts and into the perch that Persephone’s feet gripped, but she didn’t respond.   
  
“Because I can’t do it off the grounds of Hogwarts,” Harry said softly. “I wouldn’t have the strength built up to maintain and change the cycle between her and me the way I need to. And if I do it out in the open, I risk more people wandering into it, not to mention someone attacking me once they figure out what I’m doing.” The more he thought about it, the more he had become certain that Gorenson was waiting for Persephone’s burning day. Even if he wasn’t controlling her and had nothing to do with her illness, he would try to strike when she was weak and Harry, bound to her soul, was weak likewise.  
  
“There’s another reason, right?” Hermione planted her hands on her hips and lifted her chin challengingly. “Because neither of those sound like very good reasons to risk the heart of the school to me.”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “The heart of a school is its students. Not a building, however beautiful.”  
  
Hermione grumbled, but said, “Still. Isn’t the Chamber of Secrets safer, if you need a big place that no one’s going to wander into?”  
  
“The ceiling of the Great Hall,” said Ron suddenly, sitting up. “You need its magic somehow, don’t you? Because it’s the most complicated in Hogwarts?”  
  
Harry gave him an approving smile. “Partially that, but really because the ceiling cycles in and out of night and day and through the weather patterns and the seasons. It’ll provide a…” He hesitated. He knew what the books would call it, but that wasn’t the same thing as what he would call it.  
  
Luckily, Hermione came up with the word that satisfied her before he had to choose between the inaccurate but real word or the accurate but imaginary one. “You’re going to use that cycling of the ceiling’s magic as the field for your magic,” she whispered. She clasped her hands to her mouth again, but this time, her eyes shone with something like admiration. “You’re going to build off it. That’s  _genius_ , Harry.”  
  
Harry swept her a little bow. “I try.” Then he turned and moved towards the Floo.  
  
“What are you going to do?” Hermione followed behind him like a hungry hound.  
  
“I’m going to alert Draco that I have a different solution than cutting off bits of myself,” Harry said. A wicked little part of him enjoyed Hermione’s wince. Harry grinned to himself and reached for the Floo powder.  
  
Then he settled his hand and sighed. Draco had a conference of some sort today. He wouldn’t be in his house, or able to take Harry’s Floo call if he was.  
  
Harry felt a small smile pull at his lips in the next moment, and raised his hands, murmuring to the school. The stones lifted from the floor and flowed towards him, in a wave that made Hermione step back and Ron lean forwards in interest. Harry thought that Ron trusted in his bond with the school more than Hermione did, but then, that only made sense, because he had lived here longer than Hermione in the first place.  
  
The stones flowed and foamed around Harry, jumping up and down, weaving around him, surrounding him for a moment with strips of earth and rock that he could barely breathe beneath. Harry remained calm. He knew what he was asking of the school, and it would never harm him. Holding his breath for a few seconds was well worth the disguise it could provide him, besides.  
  
Then the stones dropped back into the floor. Hermione peered down at them as if expecting fissures between them. Harry knew better. The stones had been a little weakened with some of their matter gone to Harry, but they would redistribute the gaps all along the castle, so that only a grain of dust or flake of rock would be missing here and there.  
  
“What are you  _wearing_ , mate?” Ron was staring at him.  
  
Harry spread his arms and grinned. “Like it?” He was decorated with dirt in regular patterns, along with grey stone-dust, changing the colors of his clothes and even his skin. He now looked part-goblin, if a little tall for it. Part-goblins were often avoided in polite society, unless they’d held a trusted position for as long as Professor Flitwick. People would give him nervous glances and leave him alone. “I’ll be on the fringes of the crowd when Draco makes his speech.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s as safe as you think it is,” Hermione said, but shook her head when Harry glanced at her. “But I think you’re right that you need to talk to someone about this, and it might as well be Malfoy.”  
  
Harry snorted a little while he recognized the gleam in her eyes. She hoped that Draco could talk him out of this plan where she had failed. He wondered whether she would accept that his plan was successful when he had actually completed it, or if it would take a little longer than that.  
  
He turned to Ron. “Do you think I’ll pass muster?” he asked, and struck a pose, hunching his shoulders and letting his eyes go blank and glazed, as though he was dim-witted.  
  
Ron grinned, almost reluctantly. Well, he was most used to pranks and disguises than Hermione, because of all the times that the twins had used them. He nodded now and said, “Yeah. I wish I could say that you should take Persephone or Blackthorne with you, but they would recognize you instantly if you did that.”  
  
Harry winked at them both and turned towards the wall. A tunnel was already opening up for him, stairs forming in it. It would take him where he needed to go.   
  
He cast a glance at his friends and saluted them, pausing when his eyes passed over Persephone. He didn’t like leaving her alone like this. If he was right and Gorenson was waiting for her burning day to do something, to strike in a moment of weakness, then he half-felt he should stay right with her.  
  
But if his bond with Hogwarts and the wards couldn’t protect her while he was gone, then he wasn’t nearly as secure as he liked to think he was, anyway. He finished saluting, and stepped into the tunnel, making for the edge of the wards.  
  
*  
  
“Justice Elmont.”  
  
Draco paused to let that last frankly ridiculous pseudonym drop into the crowd, and smiled at the enraptured looks he received. Skeeter had showed up late, probably because she was spying in the Ministry, but she hadn’t stopped writing for the last ten minutes. Now and then she looked up and flashed him a wink.  
  
Not everyone among the reporters, Ministry flunkies, voters, and generally curious looked as enchanted with him, but on the other hand, they couldn’t turn away, either. For Draco to announce that he had a list of names that were all the same person, and then actually read all the names aloud, instead of trying to back himself up with vague promises and threats, was novel. Draco knew that Tillipop would never have done it even if he had access to such a list. He preferred to hint, and hope that people would forget they never actually saw any substance.  
  
Well, he was right about that, Draco had to admit. Lots of people  _did_ forget. The average wizarding voter was as undiscerning and credulous as any Muggle. They forgot about everything but the latest scandal, challenged the candidates on issues that it turned out they didn’t care about, and wanted the least of their privileges left untouched. They were annoying as a group, and Draco wouldn’t have wanted to represent them if he hadn’t been able to think of a use for them.  
  
Once he was in power, though, he wouldn’t have to put up with inane questions on a daily basis. Not from the  _voters,_ at any rate. He had discovered competent people in the Ministry he could work with, and that was enough for him.  
  
Rosenthal sent him a subtle hand signal. Draco relaxed further. She had been monitoring the special net of wards stretched around the crowd, ones that would have let him know if anyone had tried to smuggle in a Dark artifact. They might not be proof against an Unspeakable artifact that could disguise itself, of course, but at this point, Draco really doubted that would be a problem.  
  
Then he saw the dusty-grey figure hovering at the edge of the crowd.  
  
Draco stared for a second, and saw Rosenthal pivot to follow his gaze. She tensed, perhaps thinking it was another of Gorenson’s disguises. Well, Draco had thought the same, at first. Gorenson probably wouldn’t try to assassinate him in front of everyone again, but he might show up openly to try and taunt Draco, the way he had by sending the ring with the ghost owl.  
  
But if the figure was dressed and colored like a half-goblin, Draco knew that twist of the head, that bob of the messy hair. This was Harry, disguised who knew how, and come to support Draco in his moment of triumph. Even as Draco watched, he raised one hand and waved. And that wouldn’t give him away, either, because who would think that the all-powerful Dark Lord Potter would come to a speech looking like that?  
  
Stifling laughter, Draco turned back to his list.   
  
And that was the moment when fire reached out to him from the Manor, from the grounds, from every direction save the crowd itself, and white-hot pain flashed along his nerves, followed by dazzling darkness.


	30. Flare

The white fire came from the side, out of one of the Manor’s windows, moving so fast and so smoothly that there wasn’t anything anyone could do against it. It reached straight for Draco, and enfolded arms of fire almost lovingly around him.  
  
 _Correction,_ Harry thought as he reached out with his own power to meet the fire.  _There wouldn’t have been anything anyone could do against it, if I wasn’t here._  
  
The rage behind his magic made it soar, moving faster than the fire, faster than Harry had ever seen his own magic move when he wasn’t on the grounds of Hogwarts. The two different powers crashed together, white fire from one side and a different, golden flickering on the other. Harry surrounded and cradled Draco and laid him on the ground, then began to raise shields around the crowd.  
  
He heard some people’s hair catch on fire, but they shrieked and drew their wands. They weren’t unconscious, the way a few people on the fringes who had been knocked off their feet by the first explosion were. They could take care of themselves.  
  
He was there to protect the people who couldn’t.  
  
Touching the white fire with his own magic was like being kicked in the teeth. It was Dark magic, and it raged and twisted and twitched and whirled up in different shapes, like the leaping beasts of Fiendfyre. Harry shuddered with the weight of it. He would have liked to stop walking and concentrate on that particular fight.  
  
Would have  _liked_ to. But Draco was still down, even if he was under a cocoon-like awning of Harry’s protection now, and Harry had to be with him, by his side, where he had always promised he would be.  
  
So Harry set up a rippling shield wall to deal with the white fire as it poured towards them, and made his way, in the flesh, to Draco’s side. He bent over him and lifted him carefully to his feet. The fire had seared away some of the hair on the right side of his head, and caused a deep burn near his right eye. Harry stroked that, withdrawing some of his magic from the fight with the artifact to touch the burn. It shimmered and began to heal. Harry didn’t think he would be able to make it disappear completely, in the limited amount of time and with the limited amount of power he had, but it should be well on the path to not scarring.  
  
“Harry?” Draco whispered.  
  
Harry bowed his head over Draco’s face and cradled him close as he nodded. “Yes.” He saw no point in hiding. Anyone who could concentrate enough to think beyond the obvious and immediate in the wake of this assassination attempt would already know Harry was here. “Are you feeling all right?”  
  
“My head is ringing.”  
  
Harry reached up and felt delicately around his skull, looking into his eyes, meanwhile, as Draco opened them. “I think you may have a concussion,” Harry mumbled, and worked to make his hold gentle. He knew what he wanted to do, to lash out, but being too angry and loud right now would only hurt Draco, instead of their enemies. “Can you walk?”  
  
Draco nodded, and Harry helped him down from the platform, rescuing the list of names on the way and sticking it into his pocket.  
  
Near the bottom of the platform, Harry met Rosenthal, who seemed to be among those who hadn’t been thrown from their feet by the first explosion and also sane enough to realize that something was holding the fire back, so they didn’t need to all run screaming from it now. Her eyes were all for Draco. Harry relinquished him to her, if only for the moment. He had to do something about the rage growing in him, and he trusted Rosenthal because she was bound to him by oath.  
  
“Get him to a safe distance,” he said. “He has a concussion. He’ll have to go to St. Mungo’s, but I don’t think he should be Apparated yet.”  
  
Rosenthal nodded, and retreated. Harry looked around once. There were still people nearby on the ground, but all of them were either safe enough behind the shield he had raised, or beyond help. Harry turned to face the Manor, and the unnatural spikes of white flame still striking from the window. It really looked more like there was a sun shining through the window, rather than a fire burning.  
  
Well, Harry was going to take care of that.  _Right now_.  
  
His hands rose, and he began to call in all of the magic that wasn’t powering the immediate shield. Some he couldn’t withdraw from his bond with Hogwarts, but it wouldn’t have been possible to reach across the distance, anyway. He took what he could, and it was still more than enough power, swirling in a lazy way in front of his chest.  
  
Harry took in that power, and he took it in, until his lungs were aching with the heat and his head was light with it. Then he held his hands a few inches apart and breathed through them, directly at the fire.  
  
The magic roared out of him, into a single straight beam, concentrated between his fingers. The beam’s color went from yellow to blue to white so fast that Harry found it hard to look at.  
  
But he wouldn’t turn away. He  _would_ see what his magic did to the last of Gorenson’s pathetic assassination attempt.  
  
The beam cut across the nearest flame, and sliced it in two. Motionless sparks fell to the grass, and stopped burning the moment they were cut off from the larger fire. Harry smiled grimly. He had  _thought_ that would happen. The artifact was unnatural in every way, and its great power was the way its flames were linked together, radiating from a single source. Cut them off, and they couldn’t continue burning.  
  
Harry moved forwards, fingers extended, magic shooting and sprouting from every tip now. He raked them like claws across the side of the flames.  
  
The white fire spat and hissed, harder than any conflagration born of natural kindling, but it simply didn’t succeed. It was being forced back, it was sinking, and Harry could see now that it was coming from the window on the side of the Manor that marked Draco’s study. He hoped that not too much of what Draco loved had been in there.  
  
Because he was going to have to do more destruction than the artifact had so far to contain it.  
  
He waited until the flames had shrunk to the size of pieces of hair, and then swept his hands up and slammed them together. His magic promptly cascaded up and fell, like a fountain, down to a little shimmering pool.  
  
It bore the fire with it, and swallowed the last of the inferno. In a few seconds, Harry stood in front of a smoking window, his hands held together, containing the last writhing impulses of the artifact’s power.  
  
Harry smashed them down and down, his magic and the magic it contained, until it was a single, dense little pearl of coruscating light. Then he tossed it in the air, fully aware that some of the reporters and other spectators had scrambled back to their feet and were watching him. Well, he would give them a  _show._  
  
The pearl of light rose, and seemed as if it would expand into fire once again when it was beyond the protective influence of his shield. Harry held his hands up, and again breathed between them, though this time with his fingers wider-spread.  
  
His own flames turned the pearl of magic to a darker shadow in the intense noon of their light, and vaporized it.  
  
Harry turned back around and gave the smallest bow in the direction of those who were gaping at him, the reporters and the other watchers. He didn’t know if his half-goblin disguise was still on him, but he also knew that it didn’t matter. There weren’t that many people who could do something like he had just done. The rumors that he was Harry Potter would have spread all over the conference in moments, whether or not they had personally seen through his disguise.  
  
He turned around to study the Manor once more. It didn’t tell him anything new, though. The smoking window was still slightly smoking, not unusual when so much fire had come through it. The stones of the wall were torn and broken, little more than rubble now. Harry cocked his head to the side, wondering if Draco had been foolish enough to allow someone inside his wards to deliver the artifact.  
  
Then he paused. No, he didn’t think so. He thought he would have felt the magic the moment he stepped onto the grounds, if it had been recently placed inside the wards.  
  
But if Gorenson had sent the artifact, and Draco had thought it was a taunt or something similar, and had neglected to do anything but lock the artifact up…  
  
Yes, that might do it.  
  
Harry turned away from the Manor with his face tight. He needed to seek Draco out, and he needed to make sure that he was all right, and he needed to have a word with him about artifacts that he might have locked in his desk instead of getting rid of them the way he should have.  
  
And he needed to walk slowly across the gardens of Malfoy Manor, making it into something that other people would take for an arrogant parade. If anyone sensed how deep his weakness and exhaustion from contending against the magic went, if they thought that they might be able to attack him with impunity, then Harry would have another battle on his hands.  
  
Contrary to the people who thought of him as an all-conquering Dark Lord, that was the last thing he wanted.  
  
*  
  
“Are you all right?”  
  
Draco knew they had both asked the question at the same time, and he could sense Rosenthal curling her lip beside him. But he didn’t care. He thought his question was the more urgent one, much more urgent than Harry’s, and more important than Rosenthal’s opinion of whether they were being ridiculous.   
  
Because Harry must have thought Draco was fine, or why would he have left him alone as long as he had? And Harry was grey in the face, and his hands were shaking, and he limped all the time, as if he were leaning on a bar that ran invisibly alongside him. And he was taking great gulps of air.   
  
“I’m fine,” Harry said, and sank down beside the chair that Rosenthal had placed Draco in, reaching out to take his hand. “Tell me, did you have an artifact of some kind in your house? That was where the fire came from. Inside the Manor.”  
  
Draco jerked as he remembered the ring. Of course he had thought that it couldn’t be what Gorenson had said it was, but never once had he considered that it might hide a secret like this one.  
  
“He sent me a ring I thought I was a taunt,” Draco said. “There was nothing magical about it that I could sense, but Gorenson claimed that it had wish magic. I could supposedly use it to make any wish come true that I wanted, but it would take away what I most loved in return.”  
  
“And you kept it,” Harry said, his voice mild, but his hands gripping the arms of the chair hard enough that Draco hated to envision what those fingers would do if they were gripping his  _skin_ instead. “Even though you knew that it couldn’t possibly do what he said it did, or there was no way that he would have given it to you.”  
  
Draco had to snort at that, no matter how uncomfortable he was with the expression on Harry’s face. “I would never use it. But he wanted to tempt me, to taunt me. I thought it was real, and that was why he sent it.”  
  
Harry turned his head and stared at the still gently-burning side of the Manor.  
  
Draco coughed a little, feeling his face heat up. “Well, I was wrong,” he said. “But I swear that I cast all sorts of spells on the ring that should have told me if it was magical, and I didn’t sense anything! Certainly nothing that was capable of doing  _this_.” He waved his hand at the ruin of his study.  
  
Harry frowned a little, but then shook his head. “If it’s an artifact, it wouldn’t necessarily have its magic right on the surface. I couldn’t sense anything special about some of the artifacts the Unspeakables used when I was an Auror, but I saw their effects.” He glanced sideways at Draco. “Did he tell you that it was an Unspeakable artifact?”  
  
“Um,” said Draco.  
  
Harry bowed his head and rested his forehead on the arm of Draco’s chair this time, shaking it slowly, sadly back and forth. His lightning bolt scar pressed right on the wood. Draco thought how uncomfortable that must be, and stretched out a hand to keep Harry from injuring himself, but Harry was already lifting his head with the light of battle in his eyes.  
  
“I would never have done something like that,” Harry announced. “Accepted a gift from the enemy.”  
  
“Yeah, but you got captured by him,” Draco muttered, driven to defend himself for some absurd reason.  
  
Harry smiled at him. “Yes, and that wasn’t my proudest moment either.” He trailed his fingers gently along Draco’s arm. “I’m glad you’re all right. But  _please,_ if Gorenson tries to do something like this again, know better than to accept it, all right?”  
  
Draco leaned forwards and rested his forehead against Harry’s shoulder. “I promise.”  
  
He would have said something more, but paused. Harry’s shoulder was shaking, and Draco didn’t think it was with any sobs or laughter that Harry hadn’t shown him. He pulled away and frowned down at Harry. “Is something wrong with you?”  
  
“Always.” Harry looked briefly across the gardens, probably to gauge the reaction of their audience, and then nodded. “I have to go back to Hogwarts.”  
  
“ _What_? Now?” Draco couldn’t help the way his voice soared. This was a much more serious assassination attempt than the one where Gorenson had flung lightning at him from the top of the Manor, and it had caused a lot more damage, perhaps some deaths. Harry was going to leave him  _now_ , when Draco needed reassurance and backup to feel better?  
  
“I have to,” Harry said quietly. “For one thing, the longer I stay here, and at your side, the more people start wondering exactly what our relationship is. They already know who I am. The little show I put on couldn’t help but confirm that.”  
  
 _That “show” is probably the reason that Skeeter isn’t already over here asking questions,_ Draco thought. Even she would be wary to approach someone who had as much sheer power flowing from his fingertips as Harry did. He nodded and asked, “But what if I said that I didn’t care about that? What if I want to be openly at your side?” In truth, he thought the way Harry had reacted when he was hurt had already ruined their chances for keeping it secret, anyway.  
  
He heard Rosenthal and Harry both catch their breaths sharply. But Harry’s was the sharper, and for a moment, his eyes, searching Draco’s face, shone like the moon.  
  
But then Harry shook his head and climbed to his feet. “You might want that right now, but it wouldn’t be good for your campaign. And I think that you really, really need to continue your campaign,” he added, even as Draco opened his mouth to dispute with that. “As a fuck you to Gorenson, if nothing else. He wanted to kill you, or make you back down, and you aren’t going to.”  
  
Draco hesitated, then nodded. He could see the good sense of that advice, and from the pressure of Rosenthal’s hand on his shoulder, she saw the same. He was inclined to trust what Rosenthal thought was a good idea.  
  
“But then what excuse are you going to give for showing up here?” he asked.  
  
Harry smiled tiredly at him. He was more strained than Draco had thought. Even his hands were shaking openly now. “I’m going to say that I received a message calling me to this spot, and telling me that I could settle things with Gorenson if I came. To show what a conciliating fellow I am, I turned up. I should have known that it would only be another trap from the people who think that I’m worthless and they can’t bargain with me.”  
  
“Will anyone believe that you were stupid enough to leave Hogwarts without protection a second time?”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to speak, and then abruptly stilled and turned his head. Draco followed the direction of his gaze, but could see nothing. He supposed that Harry could be looking towards Hogwarts. Draco wouldn’t know, not from this distance, but Harry had his bond that would tell him.  
  
“Shit,” Harry said softly. “Oh, shit.”  
  
It was more frightening that he had said it that way instead of emphasizing the words. Draco surged to his feet to grab Harry’s arm, ignoring the pressure of Rosenthal’s hand on his shoulder as she tried to make him sit down. “What is it?” he demanded.  
  
“Persephone,” Harry whispered. “He may not have been controlling her, but he’s doing something to her…I have to go  _now_.”  
  
And he vanished from under Draco’s touch, through the wards and other defenses that Draco could still feel humming around the Manor. Dazed, Draco took his hand back and shook his head.  
  
He lifted his head, not sure whether he would speak to Rosenthal or try to manage a reassuring comment for the reporters, only to find Skeeter in front of him. She had singed hair, a half-burnt quill, and a deadly grin.  
  
“Tell me, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy,” she said, pronouncing every syllable separately, “was the Dark Lord apologizing for his attack on the press conference?”


	31. Turn, Turn, Turn

Harry appeared just outside the gates of Hogwarts, and pounded towards them as hard as he could. He knew that he could have appeared inside, right next to Persephone, but he didn’t know where she was at the moment, and that could have been in midair or in his office or in the middle of the grounds. He might have to look out for innocent bystanders or prevent himself from falling to his death.  
  
When he found Gorenson and started tearing him apart, he wanted to give him his  _full_  attention.  
  
He could feel his magic flickering and surging as he ran, the changes that had first alerted him to something happening with Persephone. Now and then it rippled as though Persephone’s was grabbing at it and it was being pulled towards her. Then it would start back towards him.  
  
In one way, this was the same cycle that Gabrielle had told him about. Harry had never been able to feel it so well before, but that might not  _necessarily_ be alarming.  
  
Maybe. But he had never felt it like this, and for it to begin when he had been away from Hogwarts and had been more than half-convinced that Gorenson was already waiting for Persephone’s burning day was too coincidental.  
  
As he crossed the boundary of the grounds, he felt some of his power rise in him like a fountain, shaking and spreading through his limbs. Harry gasped. He was so tired. He had dangerously exhausted himself saving Draco and the other people he could save at Malfoy Manor.  
  
But he could no more have left that undone than he could have stayed away from Persephone when he began to feel that she was in danger. Persephone wasn’t more important to him than Draco, but he had started to feel that they were equally vital to his survival, equally a part of his soul.  
  
The flickers had increased. Harry stopped, despite the pulsing in his blood that urged him to run, run, run, and concentrated. He ought to be able to tell where Persephone was now and Apparate directly there.  
  
She was in his office, he decided after a moment when his hand swung up and down in front of him like a divining rod, and then settled pointing directly towards the center of his castle. How had Gorenson got inside the wards?  
  
Harry shook his head. He was wasting time. Gorenson probably wasn’t there physically with her, anyway, but was influencing her from a distance the way he had so far managed to do.  
  
Harry wrapped his arms close enough to himself to ensure there would be no Splinching, and Apparated, soaring through empty space and ending up in his office, close to Persephone’s perch. He immediately took a step back and studied her, determined to know what he was up against when it came to Gorenson’s magic.  
  
Persephone had her wings out, as though she had tried to soar off the perch, but she was still, the way she had been when she was floating in that dreadful blue bubble in Gorenson’s office. She was blinking in and out, ripples of magic interrupting her very existence. Now and then Harry saw straight through her, her beak or her back or her talons turning transparent; now and then blue-black flames roared along her outline and obscured it; then she would snap back into being. She saw him, and cried miserably.  
  
Harry reached out a slow hand. This looked different from the attack he had expected from Gorenson, which would be an acceleration of her sickness until she faded.   
  
“My Lord!”  
  
Harry jerked around hard, a streak of killing magic flaring up in his palm before he held it back. He realized it was Briseis in the doorway of the office in enough time to keep from hitting her, but he had to bite his lip, hard, as the magic darted back down and earthed itself in his blood. He twitched his head in response to her instead.  
  
“Briseis, now is not the time.” She had parchments in her hand, and she probably wanted him to sign something.  
  
Briseis simply shook her head, eyes frightened but steady. “The Veela woman said that Persephone’s burning day was here.”  
  
 _The Veela woman? Madame de Lis?_ But there wouldn’t have been that neutral tone in Briseis’s voice when she spoke of her.  
  
 _Gabrielle._  
  
“No,” Harry whispered. “No, this is Gorenson interfering, it has to be…” He turned around and stared at Persephone. She was holding out her wings still, and crying, and shimmering. He had been so sure that Gorenson was trying to force her from existence.  
  
She was  _burning_.  
  
“She said that the burning can’t complete normally because she’s not a normal phoenix.” Briseis was speaking in that collected way she had, but faster than Harry had ever heard her do.   
“You’ll have to do whatever you were going to do. Reabsorb her back into your body, or cast a spell, or something. A ritual. Something.”  
  
Or the flames would rise. Harry knew that now. Persephone wasn’t a normal phoenix, and the burning wouldn’t consume only her. He had made her out of Yaxley’s spell, the fire that had tried to turn his own magic against him and destroy him. If Gabrielle was right, that was one reason for the instability between his own soul and Persephone’s. Let her fade or die without setting it right, and the magic would expand and explode, his own power and Yaxley’s spell.  
  
It would destroy a lot more than him, in the end.  
  
Harry scooped Persephone up and cradled her close. She was a fluctuating weight in his arms, sometimes heavy and sometimes light. Harry nodded to Briseis and strode past her, straight for the Great Hall, calm himself now that he knew what he needed to do.  
  
As he walked, doors flew shut, stones rose up like steps, and walls began to press in and curve and herd students towards their common rooms. It wasn’t mealtime, there wouldn’t be many people to remove from the Hall. Harry raised his head, and his voice began to speak from every corner of the school.  
  
“ _Go to your rooms. Stay there until I say that you can come out. Remain calm. You will be safe._ ”  
  
He could still hear some distant screams, but that was to be expected, and the school would take care of them and guide them. Corridors would open and staircases would operate only in the right directions, back to their common rooms, or their chambers in the case of the professors. If they tried to go the wrong way, towards the Great Hall, then the stones would rearrange themselves into walls blocking the corridor or the stairs would turn into smooth ramps or swing away in midair.   
  
No one would be harmed. No one would interfere.   
  
Harry held Persephone close, and ran like fire through the tunnels that opened for him.  
  
*  
  
There was so much he had meant to do, when he’d first had the idea of renewing and changing the cycle of magic that flowed between him and Persephone in the middle of the Great Hall. Check, and double check, and triple check, the school’s defenses against any power leaking out. Look up spells that functioned similarly, and information on normal phoenixes, in case they had any ideas for him. Bring in books defended with tough charms and consult them as he worked. Ask Hermione to brew some strengthening potions for him.  
  
Now there was only him, and Persephone, and his magical exhaustion, and her burning day come early.  
  
It couldn’t matter. He would not allow it to matter.  
  
Harry deposited the shivering Persephone on the Gryffindor table, and reached down into the floor under him, into the stones. Hogwarts responded with a flowing of strength so fast that it was like being caught in the middle of a river in spate. Harry shivered in annoyance and turned to Persephone, whose flames were spreading rapidly up and down the middle of her body. He stretched out his hands and arranged them with his fingers flared, somewhat mimicking the way Persephone would spread her wings in flight.  
  
He was going off no more magical theory than he had told Hermione when he revealed his original plan to her and Ron. He would have to choose instinct instead, and the dizzying plunge into nothingness, trusting to his magic.  
  
He flapped his fingers, and thick webs of light came into being, rolling back and forth and tangling between each finger of his hands and the primaries of Persephone’s wings. She couldn’t move them in response, but that didn’t matter. Harry was seeing the cycle that had been there between them all along, the unstable and crazy shifting of soul that Gabrielle had identified.  
  
All the webs shone red or gold or blue or white or orange, the colors of fire. Harry took a deep breath. This was the hardest part of the spell, or ritual, or whatever-it-was, the part he had hoped to study a little more so he could lessen the pain.  
  
Harry took another deep breath that pushed so much air into his lungs and out again that it made the bonds of light sway. They couldn’t be affected by normal interaction with the physical world, but then again, this was hardly normal, was it?  
  
His breath came out, and the air came with it, and Harry set himself on fire.  
  
The flames sprang from his skin and radiated up and down the middle of his spine, the way that Persephone’s flames were burning her. Harry shut his eyes against the pain, then screamed. Why not? He had warded the Great Hall so strongly that no sounds would pass out of it to alarm anyone else.  
  
The flames only danced, though, hurting but not consuming him. Harry swallowed. It was always good to know that he had been right about the danger when conducting a suicidal magical ritual.  
  
The bond between him and Persephone still contained the magic of that first curse that Yaxley had flung at him, the one that had ignited the whole bond between them and the creation of Persephone in the first place. It would burn, and forever burn, if he kept it moving.  
  
That was what he had done when he set up the cycle. Let the flame swell and weaken, going back and forth between him and Persephone, stronger at some points than others, but never dissipating.  
  
It had to dissipate, though, or all the weaknesses of the bond as first created would remain. Persephone would suffer painful burning days on a shorter cycle than a normal phoenix, a testament to her struggle to contain the Dark magic, and her failure. Harry would have his soul stretched between two poles, because Persephone and he shared the fire that had tried to eat him—the fire that in the case of a normal phoenix was confined to one being alone.  
  
And Persephone would still need to eat human flesh, because her first source of sustenance outside the bond had been that, and she could only replicate her experiences with such a cyclic bond, the way she would replicate her initial period of nastiness, then a sweeter one, and then her sickness.  
  
Again and again. Unless Harry could stop it.  
  
The magical exhaustion was making him shake, and the pain was worse than normal. Harry rocked back against the support that the stones of Hogwarts pushed into his feet. This would have been still worse without them.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. Destroying the contained magic of the ring at Draco’s house had damaged him and tired him. If he had known what was waiting for him here, he wouldn’t have done it.  
  
But it also gave him the idea, which had never been more than half-formed before, about how to take the fire burning him, and convert it. Destroy it. Whatever you wanted to call it. He reached over his shoulder and touched the middle of his back, letting the flames there hop onto his extended finger.  
  
The flames billowed up and down the minute he touched them, crisscrossing, the waves of heat flowing so fast that Harry winced a little. Then he swallowed, and his eyes rose to the ceiling of the Great Hall.  
  
He had planned to let that particular cyclic magic help and ground his own, hadn’t he? About time he took advantage of it.  
  
He reached out, touching the edge of his bond with Hogwarts and the magic that lingered near the ceiling, cycling it through the weather and the times of day. It manifested in his hand as a curling sparkle of light, coiling there like a drowsy golden serpent.  
  
Harry jerked his hand down, and crossed the light over with the flame that represented his bond to Persephone.  
  
There was a shriek that might not be sounding anywhere outside his own head, and the floor beneath him bounced, and tears ran from his eyes. Harry could feel his spine on fire, now, the flames sinking into his skin, burning him, the way they never had before. He staggered, head down.  
  
But that was the way he had felt when Yaxley first cast his spell, and he thought he would never have a chance of calming it. He couldn’t simply fall down, or the spell would take him after all and Yaxley would win. The  _Ministry_ would win.  _Gorenson_ would win.  
  
Harry lifted his hands, serpent and flames, gold and other colors, entwining him, and listened to Persephone’s dismal crying. Well, if sacrificing her was what he needed to do to survive, then it would have to be. His bond with Hogwarts was first and primary. He would have to choose the school if he had to choose something. But he doubted he would get the chance if he didn’t tame this magic. It would simply eat  _him_ before he could slow it down.  
  
His arms were ringed with flames, dancing up and down around his wrists and along the insides of his elbows like a three-dimensional tattoo. Harry grimaced, digging his teeth into his lip when nothing else would work, and brought his hands slowly and painfully together. The flames fought and fought against him, and his inner mental walls trembled, and perhaps even the walls of his magical core. This would have been  _so_ much easier if he wasn’t exhausted.  
  
But he still forced his hands together, the way he had when confronting the magic of the ring outside Malfoy Manor, and the flames shrank down. Now they were an even more concentrated and shimmering pearl of power, and Harry briefly envisioned the destruction that would take over if he let that magic escape.  
  
He would not. He could not. He looked at the glowing ball of Yaxley’s spell, and his bond with Persephone, and his bond with Hogwarts, and he swallowed.  
  
Then he turned and confronted Persephone. She was still perched on the table where he had left her, her neck hanging and swaying back and forth like a pendulum. She forced her head slowly up to regard him, her eyes blurry.  
  
“Hey, girl,” Harry said softly. “Just a little more of this, I promise, and then we can do whatever you want.”  
  
Persephone didn’t respond to the teasing. Harry took a deep breath, hoping that he understood all the magical theory that would actually render what he was going to do next workable instead of mental, and extended his hand, with the shimmering ball of power bobbing in the center of his palm.  
  
“Come and get it, girl,” he said.  
  
Persephone’s wings flexed, and another of those static shocks trembled through her. Then she managed to lift off the table and fly, with limp wingbeats, towards him. Harry braced himself, and managed to keep the smile on his face.  
  
Persephone landed on his arm, no weight in one second and then a light pressure in the next. Her eyes fastened blankly on the seed of power. Harry smiled at her again and waggled his fingers encouragingly.  
  
Persephone dipped her head and swallowed the ball of magic. Harry saw the motion of her throat as it passed along.  
  
And then the cycles went crazy.  
  
Harry went to his knees as his magical core  _shrieked_ inside him—yes, there was a noise, whether or not there had been one before—and something in the back of his mind ruptured, and the flames ate into him from above and below, and he bellowed and sank into the circle of his own arms.  
  
He glanced down and saw the skin and bones of his arms burning away.  
  
Harry flung his arms up. There was nothing to keep him from screaming now, and he did it, the sounds ringing out louder than the cries of Persephone as the flames immolated her from inside and out.   
  
The flames reached out to Harry—  
  
Harry crouched low, digging his feet into the floor to absorb strength from the stones as they too began to burn, wrapping his arms around his head with a low wail—  
  
And he vanished into the fire.


	32. This Thing of Darkness

At the bottom of the fire, with the embers crumbling and the pain so thick around him that it seemed the whole of his living being, Harry found himself.  
  
He came slowly back to awareness, to knowledge of his magical core, and then the magic, and then the power that he wielded, and then the alien spell still tangled around them, him and Persephone, and then the agony.  
  
All of those were separate threads, glowing red and orange in the midst of the fire. He could detect them, he could feel them, and he could decide what to do with them. He was in the middle of the pain, but it hurt neither more nor less now than it had when he first became aware of it. And he did not have to  _be_ the pain. He could step back, exile himself, think about other things.  
  
And when he did that, he began to see them more wholly.  
  
If he was a web, of braided and unbraiding magic, then so was everything else. His core was a delicate web that had always existed inside him, and now was strung from several other corners. Persephone had a black sheen and wrapped like a strangling cord around one of the same corners as his core. Yaxley’s spell hung taunting and corpse-green not far from that. The pain was a flare of disharmony in certain angles.  
  
Not exactly the same. Not widely separated, but with some distance between them.  
  
And Harry, here in the heart of the fire, because he was making and unmaking, because he had yielded everything he was to the flames, could choose what components were going to go to make him up and which were not.  
  
He reached out and gathered in the web of his core, stringing it up in the center, careful to dim neither its colors nor its warmth. He wove it and spun it until the distance between it and the pain was greater, and nodded. Yes, he wanted all of his magic back. Without it, he couldn’t protect Hogwarts.  
  
The bond with Hogwarts was there when he looked for it, coiling away beneath his feet into another world. Harry smiled. It made sense that it would, since it was linked to an object that he hadn’t burned.  
  
That gave him a base to build on. He stepped back and reached for the black, mocking cord that was Persephone.  
  
It fought him. Harry looked clear-eyed into the center of it, and saw a reflection of his own face. He paused, wondering what it meant. He hadn’t constructed Persephone as a mirror of himself. If anything, she had to be different from him, to have her own will and means of movement and a sort of soul. He reached out and stroked the black fire, and it coiled around him and somewhat distracted him from the pain.  
  
Then he knew what the reflection meant, and he had to close his eyes.  
  
Persephone had never been completely separate from him, any more than the Horcruxes were from Voldemort. She had shared his soul, after all, the way Gabrielle had told him. She had a will of her own, to an extent, but so often, it was linked to something he was doing, if only to go contrary to what he wanted. No one would so perfectly oppose him at every turn and then turn around and be compliant if they existed separately from him and didn’t always care about what he did.  
  
Harry took a deep breath. He didn’t want to recreate Persephone if she was going to be like that again, any more than he wanted to recreate her with an appetite for human flesh. He had thought burning away everything they were had meant he could reforge her in almost the same image. Keep her from eating human flesh, and the main problem would be solved.  
  
But if all he had was a slave, then he didn’t want to make her again.  
  
While he thought, the black fire had twined itself around his shoulders, and pressed close, and dug in. Harry turned his head and met his eyes in the dark mirror of it again.  
  
Now that he looked at it more closely, he noticed that the reflection didn’t look exactly the same. This one had eyes that were perhaps a shade darker green than his, and he wore black robes, expensively tailored, that Harry had never worn and would never have cared to wear. He had a smile that looked as if it might bruise his lips.  
  
This was a part of himself. He had pushed a bunch of his own darker, and maybe Darker, magic and impulses into Persephone. She had been a convenient container.  
  
Harry swallowed. He mourned—well, maybe not Persephone, but what he thought she had been. A being who could fly around him, and sometimes would do as she was told for the sheer joy of wrongfooting him, and who had her own opinions about things. A companion.  
  
 _You have Draco for that. And your friends. And Briseis. And a lot of other people in your court, some of whom would be delighted to tell you that you were wrong._  
  
Harry half-smiled. The reflection in the black fire suddenly frowned at him, and flung up a hand as though it was begging Harry to hold back.  
  
But Harry had made his decision. He reached out his hands, and gathered the serpent of black fire close, although now it struggled to escape from him and flee into some far corner of his being, and carefully picked it apart.  
  
It was a weave of many things: his beliefs that he couldn’t always act Dark, part of his power, the cycle that he had tried to set up when he realized he was burning alive from Yaxley’s spell, and some of his fascination with Dark Arts. He pulled it apart, and saw all the different parts of it, and nodded. Other than Yaxley’s magic, this had all come from him. This was his.  
  
But he had a bond to another companion, a deeper one, who would give him what Persephone could not, and accept the tribute he could offer it.  
  
He began to swirl the magic that was his around his head, along with the cycle. He felt wisps of it trying to catch at him, and winced. For a moment, it had felt as if Persephone was fighting to stay alive.  
  
But he could think of no way to make her separate from him and make her really independent. He had thought he had last time, but he’d only been fooling himself. And there was no place to get rid of Yaxley’s spell unless he took it away from her.  
  
Without the spell, Harry wasn’t even sure that she would be able to  _be_ a phoenix, and return to the notion of cycling.  
  
Another swirl of the magic around his head, and it scooped up the lingering darkness from Yaxley’s spell. Harry thought he heard someone scream when that happened, and smiled grimly. If Yaxley was watching from the afterlife and didn’t like this, then Harry would do everything he could to piss the bastard off.  
  
The magic was going around his head, around his body, through the pain and the rest of the fire, like a net now. Harry took a deep breath. The floor beneath his feet was still steady, the bond he had to Hogwarts linking and confirming him in the real world.  
  
 _I make this a gift to you,_ he thought, though as far as he knew there was no one who would appreciate or even hear that announcement.  
  
Then he turned, dropped to one knee, and drove all that magic into his bond with Hogwarts.  
  
There was a ripple that Harry felt in more than his bones; it went through his skull, his brain, his blood, his muscles, his meat. The voices that he had heard in the distance screamed again, and Harry winced from the noise. But he had chosen his companion, the one who was most faithful, the one that was large enough to absorb power like this, and he drove it down and down and down.  
  
The screams sounded again. Harry felt himself beginning to unravel, this little corner of awareness and power he had fought to secure tearing apart. He had been bound to Persephone, and getting rid of her affected him.  
  
 _Affects me, but does not destroy me,_ Harry thought, and flung himself into thoughts of Hogwarts, which had served him so faithfully, and thoughts of his court, full of people that depended on him.  
  
They called him Lord. Hogwarts called him more than that. Comforted him, fed him, let him move quickly, protected him. Hogwarts was the reason that he had done all this in the first place.  
  
Not Persephone, as much as he had cared for her. Not to fight Death Eaters. He was here for Hogwarts, and that meant he had to  _be here._  
  
Harry drove the magic down and down and down, and Hogwarts expanded, flexed, and then swallowed the stored strength. That was what Harry had wanted Persephone to do, to swallow it and then burn and arise from the ashes, but it had become too clear that she couldn’t do that. Her nature was too closely tied to his. She couldn’t consume or resist Yaxley’s evil spell because  _he_ couldn’t do it.  
  
But Hogwarts was bigger than she was, and more independent, for all that it was also intricately tied to Harry. He poured the magic into it, and all that it did was increase the well of magic available to Hogwarts. There was one more ripple, and it settled into silence.  
  
 _Use the magic well,_ Harry thought as he stood up again.  _Use it to defend my people, to make the walls and the wards stronger and the link with the grounds more extensive._  
  
A deep sensation answered him, not words, but more like feeling a small earthquake passing through underground. He knew that Hogwarts had heard him, and would do that with the gift he had given it. Hogwarts was protective of all its children, all its inhabitants.  
  
And he had bound himself to it even more strongly, by practically inviting it into his core.  
  
Harry snorted as he turned around and gathered up all the other strands of fire and pain around him. As if he would ever be free again, anyway. He was the Dark Lord of Hogwarts, not all of Britain, and the limits that defined him and made him free to ask also constrained him. He would be doing very little traveling in the future.   
  
Now, though, he had one more task to accomplish. He looked into the heart of the fire, and saw the agony looking back at him.  
  
There was no way out but through.  
  
Harry drove himself in, and down, and through in response. He had thought to burn and rise from the ashes with Persephone, and to do the same every time she burned, to join her in her burning day. He had thought that would prevent her from having to eat human flesh. But without the cyclic magic of Yaxley’s spell, there was no way to do that. He had only one chance to rebuild himself and return, and that would have to be it.  
  
He gathered up the fire and wound it around his limbs, then stormed through the pain. It made him scream again. He wondered for a second what the others would think if they could hear him screaming, but Hogwarts was soundproofed against that kind of thing. He had made sure of it, before he shut the doors of the Great Hall. Perhaps it was even stronger, now that he had made that little addition to the school’s strength.  
  
He wove flames into limbs, set up his magical core with the web again, and draped himself with a blanket of heat and colors that became skin. The pain, he had to accept. Harry had lived through pain before, and although it would never be his favorite activity, it had been necessary for many things. He wore endurance proudly.  
  
He could not strengthen himself, make himself a more powerful wizard or a better protector. In fact, he thought that he might be a trifle weaker than before, since he had poured so much magic into the walls and stones of Hogwarts. But he was willing to accept that loss, as long as he would have the advantages the extra strength conveyed—and he couldn’t think of any reason that he wouldn’t.  
  
Harry closed his eyes, and reassembled in a flash: flesh, robes, color, light, sound. He came back to himself on the floor of the Great Hall, panting as he felt the last of the pain sting and sing along his nerves and then fade away. Without Yaxley’s spell to power it, it was nothing more than the agony of transformation.  
  
He opened his eyes and considered his hands, which had been among the first things to burn. There was skin sheathing them again, to all appearances utterly normal. Harry nodded slowly. He hadn’t been sure that he would  _get_ to come back to looking like normal when he had immolated himself like that.  
  
He still had to stay down and quiet for a little longer, recovering. Then he forced himself onto his feet and towards the doors of the Great Hall.  
  
When he opened them, there was no one on the other side. Harry stared for a moment, then snorted softly. Of course. He should have known that this was the one time his best friends and the students and the members of his court would obey him and actually get under shelter instead of waiting around or trying to spy on what he was doing.  
  
He wobbled his way towards the entrance hall. He would order Hogwarts to unblock the doors and windows in a second, but he wanted a short space of time to himself, when he didn’t need to defend his boundaries or borders or answer prying questions about what had _really_ happened.  
  
In which he could mourn the loss of Persephone.  
  
But when he stepped out onto the grounds, he could hear the sounds that Hogwarts’s walls had prevented him from hearing before. A line of wizards stood outside his wards, steadily hurling magic at them. Some of them wore the grey robes of Unspeakables, and at their head stood a single strong, tall wizard that Harry knew well.  
  
Gorenson did stagger as he met Harry’s eyes through the gates, and Harry thought he knew why. He had probably attacked when he felt Persephone’s burning day. He had been monitoring her through some sort of magic, Harry was sure of it. He had known that she would weaken, and if he hadn’t actually caused her sickness, then he had taken advantage of it.  
  
A cold surge stirred into life in Harry’s stomach when he thought of that. It worked its way towards the surface, strong and unyielding, like a whirlpool, and he knew a second later what it was.  
  
It was anger.  
  
Gorenson’s wizards hadn’t paused when they saw Harry; if anything, their assault redoubled. The wards hadn’t started to crack or fall or even weaken yet. Harry wondered if that was partially because of the new strength that he had poured into them when he slammed his magic and Yaxley’s into the stones. But he wondered that with an abstract part of his mind, one small and distant from the roaring anger.  
  
Gorenson had kidnapped Harry. He might be indirectly responsible for Persephone’s death, the need to unbind the magic and unmake her. He was  _definitely_ either responsible for the assassination attempts on Draco or had let them take place with his knowledge and approval.  
  
And he hadn’t expected Harry to come alive out of this, or he wouldn’t have attacked the court like this. The expression of shock was fading from his face now, but it had been there. He had planned to attack the wards when they were at their weakest, and storm through Harry’s court, and take his people.  
  
Harry had had  _enough_.  
  
He lifted one hand. There was a soft, distant sound in the air above his head, as though Persephone was alive out there still, flying and calling to him. Harry clenched his fist, and magic rose out of him and streaked over the walls like a comet.  
  
He might not be able to attack most people who didn’t stand on his grounds. And he had learned his lesson about venturing off them. And anyway, he didn’t actually know if all the wizards behind Gorenson had his same level of guilt.  
  
But by God, he was tired of  _this one_.  
  
The magic, formed of pure rage and fatigue, glowing Dark, torn from his magical core and not from his bond with Hogwarts, soared straight and true at Gorenson, who didn’t Apparate away. Afterwards, Harry was never sure if that was because he couldn’t move fast enough, and knew it, or if he was simply arrogant enough to think he could meet it. Gorenson tilted his head back and laughed as the comet landed on his face.  
  
That probably indicated the latter.  
  
The laughter faded. The light of Harry’s comet, which had been blue-green, turned black. It crouched there, glowing, and the Unspeakables and other wizards who had been helping Gorenson attack Hogwarts backed away in terrified silence. Harry smelled burning grass, but it was off Hogwarts’s grounds, so he couldn’t feel its pain. He could only grieve the necessity of it. Or he would, when he could feel grief again.  
  
He stood there with his arms folded, and the light faded. In the center of the scorched ground was a pile of blacked bones, placed neatly in a pyramid, with the skull at the top. They looked as if they had been charred in a fire hundreds of years ago. At the foot of the pile lay the halves of Gorenson’s broken wand.  
  
The audience turned, as one, to stare at Harry.  
  
Harry gave them a wide, nasty smile. Maybe he would regret this later, maybe not, but right now, he was tired and his phoenix was dead, and he had come back from the fire, and he could see smoke rising from the roofs of Hogsmeade, which meant Gorenson had attacked even more people he was sworn to protect.   
  
“I am the Dark Lord, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and lowered his voice. “ _Do not fuck with me_.”  
  
The pops of Apparition sounded as Harry turned and began to walk, slowly, painfully, with fire-renewed muscles hurting him every step of the way, along the castle wards, to where he would be able to direct water from the lake to help Hogsmeade.


	33. Dark Lord Potter

“You still haven’t answered my question about whether this was Lord Potter or not.”  
  
Draco raised one hand and pressed it against the left side of his head, where so much hair had been singed away. “I was injured in the explosion,” he whispered. “You can hardly blame me if my head is still whirling, can you? If my brain was jostled in my skull?”  
  
“And I can hardly blame the public of Britain for wanting to know more,” Skeeter muttered, but she sat down on the grass in front of him again, staring. Most of the reporters had chosen to stay, actually, which Draco couldn’t say he understood. A few of them had  _died_. He had thought they’d want to go and be with their dead friends, or at least get their injuries treated.  
  
But no, instead they crowded around him and stared at him so breathlessly that Draco was tempted to tell them to shut up and go elsewhere, that he would see them only if and when they managed to bring him a Healer and an apology for their nosiness. Only Rosenthal’s grip on his shoulder had, several times, prevented him from saying what he really thought.  
  
Well, that and the consideration that it might be for the best  _not_ to deny that Harry was responsible for the attack. Otherwise, some of them might start wondering about his and Harry’s relationship again.  
  
But Draco’s head still hurt, and the Healers were taking their sweet time tending to him. Mostly, that was because they were occupied with the dead and wounded reporters. Draco understood. But he had seen some of the nervous glances coming towards him. That was another factor that made him wonder if it was wise to deny Skeeter’s ingenious rumor. They might already believe that Draco himself was dangerous and to be feared.  
  
But finally one Healer plucked up her courage and started over, and Draco managed to give her a nice smile and bend his head. The woman’s demeanor changed as she saw his singed hair, and she swished her wand, murmuring a spell Draco recognized, to check for concussions. His mother had regularly cast it on him after the Dark Lord had used Draco as “training” for some of his Death Eaters.  
  
“No concussion, but it does seem that you have some damage to your skull,” said the Healer, and began to fuss around him. “Does the light seem abnormally bright? Is your magic buzzing? How many fingers am I holding up?”  
  
Draco relaxed a little. At least some Healers would always do their duty and put the patient’s welfare before worries about whether the patient was the target of a mad Dark Lord who would blow your windows out if you helped his enemy.  
  
That…that might be a story they could work with.  
  
“Do you feel up to talking now, Ministerial Candidate Malfoy?” Skeeter was hovering next to him again as the Healer completed her task and stepped back with a little cluck of satisfaction. Apparently the lump on Draco’s skull was gone now, and she had a draught she would give him for the pain, and the hair would grow back with a charm she could teach him. She was saying that around and over Skeeter’s waiting silence, but it was the silence that Draco felt, more strongly than her words.  
  
Draco took the draught in the vial the Healer was handing him, and met Skeeter’s eyes. He knew that he would have to make his decision about what to say in the next few seconds. She still wanted as much of the truth as she could pry from him, because it might be exciting, but she would lose patience in a moment and go off and make up what would sell papers.  
  
“Ministerial Candidate Malfoy.”  
  
The voice sounded like a bell tolling. Draco started and turned around. He hadn’t sensed Harry passing through his wards, but then, he never did. He could tell from Rosenthal’s tense and breathless silence beside him that  _she_ , at least, would have been happier if there was some warning.  
  
Harry stood there, but he was clad in a kind of floating darkness that Draco had never seen before. It drifted about him like torn, tattered strips of a cloak. Draco looked automatically to his shoulder for Persephone, and gasped when he didn’t see her there.  
  
His eyes went back to Harry’s face, and he thought he knew what had happened. One way or the other, Persephone wasn’t here anymore.  
  
But Harry was continuing, speaking before Draco could decide whether it was even a good thing to acknowledge his grief or not. “Do you understand our positions? Our  _mutual_ positions? What would happen if you challenged me openly?”  
  
Draco’s shoulders dropped a little. Harry must have been here at least a while before he revealed himself, studying the situation and deciding what to do. And he had decided to go with the cover story that it was him who had caused this explosion, and decisively turn the public’s expectations in the direction of them being enemies. At the same time, the Minister for magical Britain would need to meet with the Dark Lord of Hogwarts on occasion. They would need some respect between them.  
  
It would be an easy way to give them an excuse to meet, that was sure.  
  
Draco half-bowed, not in a way that could look  _too_ subservient to the greedy eyes of Skeeter and the others, and said, “I understand. But was it necessary to destroy my home and kill some innocents to get the message across?” He thought he put enough wounded pride into his voice to satisfy even Skeeter’s voracious appetite.  
  
Harry smiled.  
  
 _It’s that or weep,_ Draco understood instinctively, and tried not to flinch from the smile, even as Harry said, “You are being given the chance to think again. The people I killed are regrettable casualties. But they are what happens if anyone stands too close to a political relationship that will be fraught with difficulty, and more may happen if you challenge me again.” He held Draco’s eyes. “I trust you understand me? What the challenge was?”  
  
 _We can’t show our relationship in public. Not the way that Harry’s chosen. Not the path that he’s going to walk._  
  
Draco kept his eyes on Harry as he slowly inclined his head. “I understand what it was,” he said. “I will not make it again.”  
  
 _I have to seem to be the Minister who gets along with you. Maybe the only one who can get along with you. If we’re closer than that, then no one will want to elect me, because someone under the protection of a dangerous, unpredictable Dark Lord could be dangerous himself. But someone who can deal with him and mysteriously keep from going too far in the way the Ministry always does…_  
  
That person was going to have an advantage, not only in the election but in any other arena where he chose to apply himself.  
  
“Dark Lord Potter!” Skeeter, who apparently had a suicidal edge, was trotting up to Harry, waving her hand. “What was the challenge? What was the inspiration for you attacking the Manor?” She paused and seemed to study Harry more closely. “And where is that beautiful phoenix who was always with you?”  
  
Harry held up one hand, and something whirled into existence behind him. For a second, Draco thought it was Persephone, and that his thoughts of her being gone had been premature after all, but then he saw the sharp edges of them, and the separate way they moved, and instinctively shook his head. Persephone couldn’t do that even with flames wrapped around her, and there was a deeper, charred black to these fragments that didn’t compare to the polished dark color Persephone was.  
  
Had been. Probably.  
  
Harry settled the fragments on the ground, and Skeeter and Rosenthal both took a step back when they saw what they were. Draco didn’t. He wondered if he was too numb, or if the blow to his head had slowed some of his reactions. Either way, he saw Skeeter’s eyes come to him, judging him even through her own shock.  
  
“This is the man who was the doom of my phoenix,” Harry said, and his voice was rawer and hoarser than ever. “Who attacked Hogwarts when I was in the middle of attempting to save her. His name when he kidnapped me was Edgar Gorenson, but as I know Ministerial Candidate Malfoy was telling you when he  _passed beyond the limits of my tolerance_ , he went by many other names.” His gaze went back to Draco, and there was grief behind it, as well as a desperate plea for support. Draco nodded slowly in return. This was just the cover story they would have to live with, not the reality. He and his family had already reinvented themselves once, after the war. This was another chance to do so.  
  
And at least it meant Gorenson was dead. Draco wanted to hear the full story later, especially how involved he really had been in Persephone’s sickness, but he knew he wouldn’t get it right now.  
  
“Goodness,” said Skeeter, faintly, one hand fluttering up to touch her throat. She seemed to feel that wasn’t enough, but also not to know what would be. She cleared her throat and then repeated more strongly, “Goodness. What did you do to him?”  
  
“Ask the Unspeakables who came to Hogwarts with him to attack the wards,” Harry said, swirling the trailing strips of darkness around him. “I suspect that more of them will be eager to sell the story, to finance a new life and different career.” He appeared indifferent to the other reporters who were hanging back but snapping photographs of the pile of charred bones. His eyes came to, and lingered on, Draco’s face. “Ministerial Candidate Malfoy. You will contact me soon, so that we can discuss what you will do to make sure that you do not trespass on my temper again?”  
  
“Yes, my Lord,” said Draco, but didn’t bow this time. He also couldn’t appear too subservient to Britain’s Dark Lord if he was going to treat with him on an equal basis.  
  
Harry nodded distantly at him, and vanished. As usual, Draco didn’t feel him pass through the wards, but it seemed as though Harry had folded himself inside those strips of darkness and gone.  
  
 _That was his magic,_  Draco thought suddenly, with the kind of jolt that only the best insights made in his head.  _What was left of it at the moment. He’s exhausted._  
  
“What did he mean, about the challenge?” Skeeter was asking again, turning back to him.  
  
Draco sighed. He could do this kind of fencing in his sleep, most of the time, but right now, he was aching and tired, and so was Harry, and truth was the best weapon.   
  
“Can it wait, madam?” he asked quietly. “People died here today. We learned a valuable lesson in the way that we deal with a Dark Lord, who seemed so tame and…and isn’t. I’ll talk to you in the morning, but please, let it go for now.”  
  
Skeeter blinked for a second, looked at the grass where the dead reporters had lain, and then nodded. “All right,” she said, but glanced at the blackened bones again before she added, “I’ll expect a full interview in the morning, mind,” before she hurried off.  
  
Draco heard other footsteps leaving as he leaned on Rosenthal’s arm back to the Manor. He would spend a few hours sleeping and making sure that nothing was wrong with his head, and make clear the truth behind the explosion to Rosenthal, before he Flooed to Hogwarts.  
  
Where he had to go. Harry was waiting for him.  
  
*  
  
Harry didn’t know how long he had spent alone in his office before the Floo opened and Draco tumbled through the fire.  
  
It was long enough to have asked house-elves to take Persephone’s perch away. Harry would have burned it away, but he was so tired that his core ached within him, as though it was a broken bone. He didn’t think it was good policy to try any more magic right now. He sat with his head in his hands and took little gasping breaths instead.   
  
His mind spun and blurred with new thoughts. Persephone was gone. Draco was coming. Draco was safe. Gorenson was gone. Dozens of people—the ones who had been with Gorenson, the ones who had been at Malfoy Manor—now thought he was an insane Dark Lord. Some people might suspect the truth, if they wondered who the wizard was who had comforted Draco immediately after the blast and who had burned up the pearl of the artifact’s power in the air.  
  
But Harry got his explanation even for that last, when the owl dumped the  _Daily Prophet_ on the desk in front of him. He had been there, explained Skeeter’s breathless story, but only in an attempt to make himself look good by stopping the destruction that he had himself caused. It wouldn’t work, because too many people were on to him, and he had destroyed the last impulse of good will towards him in many hearts by showing up with Gorenson’s burned bones only a few hours later.  
  
Harry snorted and let his head drop down onto his desk. Trust the British public to find some way that they could believe evil of him and still be comfortable.  
  
And then Draco was there, and he walked around the desk and put one hand, wordlessly, on Harry’s shoulder. Harry turned and rested his chin against Draco’s arm.  
  
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Draco asked quietly. He dragged up a chair when Harry nodded, but he did it with his wand, so that he didn’t have to move away from Harry at all.  
  
Harry did his best to tell Draco about it, about the moments when he had been moving through the fire, and the moments when Persephone had been unmade forever—no, when he had unmade her—and the way he had strengthened his bond with Hogwarts, and killed Gorenson. All the while, the reality was out there, somewhere, untouched and unburnished by the words he chose.  
  
How could he make Draco  _understand_ that?  
  
But Draco was there, and understood anyway. And his face was pale and strained, but he was still  _there_ , leaning forwards to press his lips against Harry’s after he confessed that Persephone had just been another part of him and he couldn’t stand to have a companion without a will of their own, and again right after he told him about killing Gorenson and about what he had said to make the Unspeakables and other Ministry wizards Apparate.  
  
“And that’s the way it is,” Harry whispered afterwards. “They think I’m insane, and we’ve chosen to play into this story.” He turned and stared at Draco. “Can you stand it? For everyone to think that you’re my—my torture project, not my equal, someone who can stand up to me but someone who’s always subject to threats of retaliation?”  
  
Draco stirred slowly. It seemed as if he was coming back from a long way away, even though his hand had never moved from Harry’s shoulder. But life poured back into his face as he spoke.  
  
“I wanted to be Minister, and then the campaign got boring. And then I met you, and I found a new challenge. But I never did know how to reconcile our relationship with the public’s knowledge of it. I couldn’t swear to you as my Lord in my own form. I had to pretend to be your lover in a glamour. And no one would trust me if they thought I was just your puppet.”  
  
Harry nodded, silently asking him to continue.  
  
“But I don’t want to give either of those things up,” Draco said, and turned a slow, hard smile on Harry. “I think this is the best way. No matter how hard we  _might_ try to tell the truth, they would publish lies about us anyway. No matter how much you might assert that I’m your equal and you don’t desire to rule me, no one would believe it. If they have to believe lies, let it be a story of our own making.”  
  
He leaned in and kissed Harry, long and lingering, and some of Harry’s distress over Persephone had been transformed, was bubbling hot and dangerous, when he pulled back. “But I think we can modify the lie,” Draco continued thoughtfully. “We can make me more your equal, not in magical power, but in my determination to defend Britain against you. And we can make it seem as if you’re not as insane as you might have looked today. If years pass without you killing anyone, then that’ll be easy.”  
  
“I don’t know what the Ministry might do next,” Harry had to mutter.  
  
“Nothing as bad as it could,” Draco said. “Because, next month,  _I’ll_ be running it.”  
  
Harry had to smile at him. “So—what? We rule in the guise of a lie?”  
  
“Like I said,” Draco murmured, shrugging, “lies are all they will let us have in public anyway. Never the truth. We could swear to what we really share under Veritaserum, and they would insist that your magic is strong enough to bypass the Veritaserum and I only thought I loved you and I was really in love with a dream, not the real Dark Lord of Britain.” He leaned forwards with his eyes on Harry’s. “In an ideal world, yes, I would want a relationship with you that I could show to everyone. The Minister of Magic and the Dark Lord’s consort, at the same time. Sounds like a winning combination to  _me_.”  
  
Harry did have to snicker.  _Is it only Slytherins who can make blind power sound so appealing_?  
  
“But we don’t live in an ideal world,” Draco continued, his smile only growing broader. “I’m a politician. I know that. I depend on it for my job. I say, if the public is gullible enough to swallow a story, let it be ours.” His hands suddenly clamped on Harry’s shoulders. “And in private, let me be yours.”  
  
Harry surged forwards and claimed Draco’s lips with a single kiss. Draco went down beneath him without a murmur, wrapping his arms around Harry’s shoulders, his legs around Harry’s hips.  
  
They made love that night, more gently than they ever had before, in celebration of the life that continued after Persephone’s death, after Gorenson’s death, after all the deaths. And if the public world was not ideal, if they would continue believing much the same stupid shit about Harry that they always had, and some even stupider shit about Draco…  
  
Their private world was as ideal as it could be.  
  
 **The End.**  
  
As noted above, there will be one more story in the series, called  _Burning Day_. It should start posting in about a week. Thanks for reading.


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